I was psychologymaxxing for a while, the dreams are symbolic and there were recurring patterns for sure, it's not random at all.
there are my daydreams, which fall into two kinds:
1. maladaptive fantasies (not always pleasant)
2. the random thoughts that occur to me
and then there are
3. night dreams
fantasies are rather repetitive, some emotional complex or repressed emotion acted out / an itch is scratched
random thoughts (say I think about "Bane" from the batman movies) - seem random at first, I can say: "well this is just some character from a movie, I don't have time for this shit"
but then if I try to assume my subconscious gave it to me for a reason, I can see that
"Bane" is a symbol, that is associated with many topics:
morality (villain), politics, charisma, lookism, trauma and pain shaping a person
the list goes on - all the sudden it's not longer "goofy bad guy from movie/ childish"
so the subconscious can pack a lot of information into one symbol like that,
it can seem meaningless and silly if you discredit it straight away
it also doesn't fit into your schedule and current TODO list like you'd want
now a night dream takes this to the max: it can probably be about shit that happened to you when you were just a child and has shaped your life every single day - your attitude, beliefs.. Something that is invisible to you, like the air you breath
note that you can also have a nightmare where you daily worries leak into the dreamstate, so it will be some straightforward shit like a dream about "running out of money" when you're literally about to be broke IRL
but we do forget dreams by default, which makes me question the point of thinking about them in conscious life
the process was extremely painful, and I'm not enlightened. I gave up but if you're still self-improoving you can look into that kind of shit, it's interesting for sure (unfortunately very painful though)