Dreams are very interesting things; an experience that every human being shares, yet we have no solid way to describe or explain them. Yet we have them consistently, night after night. We imagine up entire worlds, entire existences, entire fabrications of reality. All within minute's time. Our shortest stage of sleep, REM cycles, last very briefly, yet offer us the most vivid and memorable of our dreams. Our minds are at full steam. I just watched the movie Inception, so obviously dreams are somewhat on my mind. This post is inspired by that movie; but not about it. Without giving much away, I'll explain. A character describes a dream in which they lived their life, but then woke up. And ever since that point in the movie, that idea has been on my mind. Not as some abstract thought, but as a shared experience.
At one point in high school, I think it was either my junior or senior year; I lived my life. From that point on until I died. Its the most vivid dream I've ever had, one that I remember strongly. As the years have gone by I've forgotten bits and pieces, and smaller details have become a hazy blur. But I do remember it, because it wasn't a dream: it happened. Or at least that's how it feels still to this day. I sometimes wonder if I'm living in a dream, simply because I already have. It went something like this: I went to bed as usual, and woke up, as usual, I went to school, as usual. Eventually I graduated high school. I went to college, and finally finished up there as well. I met a girl who's beauty and kindness knew no bounds, but who's face and features now elude me. I remember how I proposed to her, the crook of her smile as she tearfully said yes; our wedding day, and how my parents had never looked prouder. I ended up with a solid career in a line of work I loved, but can no longer remember, a job that paid well enough for my wife and I to support three incredible children. I remember cradling my firstborn son in my arms, a sense of love so strong that I felt I might die from it. I remember teaching my daughters to ride their bicycles, of being there for them, even when they didn't want me there. And one by one, as they graduated from high school, moving on in their lives, I felt a hole ripped through me when they moved out, praying that I had raised them to the best of my ability. My wife and I never really got into the routine of having an empty house, but I remember when my son got married and had his first child; we suddenly had more little ones running around the house. I remember the pride I felt when I handed my oldest daughter to her grinning fiancé, just as I had accepted the hand of my bride from her father. And I remember growing old, the absolute numbing pain of having to bury my own two parents, of having to say goodbye. A pain so great that I'm crying now while writing this. And my wife? Seeing her go was indescribable. I remember finally, old, withered, and dying, laying on my deathbed in an unknown hospital, surrounded by my children, their spouses, and my grandchildren, taking my last breath. I could draw the false ceiling's tile's they're so clear in my mind. I remember closing my eyes, thanking God for the life He gave me and for His love and guidance throughout my life. And I remember opening them, and seeing the textured ceiling and hanging fan of my high school room. I walked in a confused silence around my house that morning, remembering all the "old" memories of the place, with a mind still 80 years old, looking back. It took me twenty, maybe thirty minutes to realize that I was awake, that I was alive, that the 60+ years I had just lived were a sham, a fake, a fraud, an illusion made up by my mind. But the dream is not easily forgotten. I still remember the smell of my wife's hair. The emotions I experienced have never faded. They get buried over time, but with this recent reminder from this movie, they have all flooded out as clear and hauntingly real as the night I dreamt them.
Dreams are powerful things; and our minds are their creators. The perception of the dream is as real as when you're awake, but you never know it; the weird things that happen are never actually processed as being unusual or out of place until after you wake up. And when do you ever remember that you've started to dream? You get thrown right in, head first, into an event that your mind has seemingly already been playing out. Like a movie on a VHS tape that someone forgot to rewind. Dreams are a mysterious fiction that we humans create for some reason. I don't know if we'll ever figure them out. And I really don't know if we are ever meant to.
