I’m a vivid dreamer, often practicing lucid dreaming but if nothing else, I’m aware of the process as it happens as I generally don’t need to control anything in them and enjoy the show instead.
When I wake up after a few hours of sleep, I like when I can take the first 20 minutes and puzzle out the dream I’d had.
There’s a limited amount of time because dreams fade quickly without reinforcement, and linking the dream quickly to events in the last few hours before sleep helps not only anchor the dream but bring it context.
Now dreams tell you a story in metaphor/analogy and it has its own logic.
For me, the logic is very personal to me: experiences or thoughts or emotions I had during the last “awake period” come together in unique and interesting ways.
From what I understand, dreams start at the end and work there way to the beginnings but they replay forwards in the few moments as you are awakening because we cannot cognitive process Time flowing Backwards.
In short, the cause is at the end of the dream: broken pipes flowing water everywhere in the end of the dream and having to go to the bathroom when you wake up, is because having to go to the bathroom woke you up, and the dream was explain rationally *why it was* to your dream consciousness that you NEED to wake up now.
All symbolic, abstract, artsy, metaphorical, and it pulls from ANYWHERE in your memories or ideas for it, but especially from events of the prior waking period.
This is at least true for me, consistently. Other people may experience dreams quite differently than I do and have different interpretations.
In any case, I find dreams a lot of fun and it feels like solving a mystery when I can spend the first 15-20 minutes after waking up and puzzle it out. I get that “eureka! I’ve got it!”, which is a positive way to start a day. Not bad for 15 minutes of half-awake thought