Like a Dream

Sometimes it seems like the things I notice in life must be figments, like they can't possibly be real. People who to horrendous things, things I would never come up with on my own, but must somehow be lurking in the back of my mind anyway. And even if they weren't there before, they are now, because I see them almost every day I turn on the evening news.

But its not all nightmares and evil omens. There are also people who do things so wonderful that I can't imagine their stories can really be true. Pure, selfless people who think of others before themselves; people who love the world so much, they would be willing to die to save just a portion of it: do such people really exist? The stories I've told would tell me they do.

As for my own life, it's not so exciting in either extreme, but still, most of the time, it just seems like a dream. It's little things really. Suddenly feeling like I can't remember something that I should have, like there's some detail that my brain just skipped over because it ultimately wasn't important. Seeing someone I've never met before but who still seems strangely familiar. Thinking something is going to happen and then seeing that come true. A glare from a nemesis or a smile from a potential friend or even lover. It's simple, but sometimes it's just so unreal, the things that happen in every day life.

The biggest thing though, is how little of it really seems to matter. The things that seem so important in the moment end up to ultimately be meaningless, to the point that I forget them later when another cycle of my life takes over. The dream seems thrilling at the time, but if I can't even remember it a few months or days or even hours later, what good is it really? Perhaps I have an impact on someone else's dream, and that's at least something, but I have no memory or knowledge of it myself. And that's the strangest feeling: knowing you had a dream, but having no recollection of it.

It's all meaningless in the end; well, most of it anyway, but that doesn't make it any less enjoyable. We all treasure our dreams as we're having them, but when we wake up, we realize that they were nothing more than dreams, and it's real life that really matters. When you're dreaming, you think it's real, and it's all that's on your mind. Our dreams are a part of us, but they aren't who we are. Who we are is who we are when our eyes are open. We love our dreams, as we should, but if all we have is dreams, we are left longing for something more.

Life is a dream, and I'm just a sleep walker waiting to wake up.