Dreaming

What is a dream?

It is said that we create our own reality, but using this loose definition, what we call reality is just another dream.

I know I'm not dreaming when I am unable to control what happens around me. If I get what I want, it somehow seems fake, less real, untrustworthy. If I create what I want, is everything just a dream?

...Is reality what happens when you want to wake up, but can't?

At the end of the day, we return to dreams within our waking dream in vain attempts to tickle ourselves awake. Occasionally we succeed...

Then wake into the dream anew.

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow-
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand-
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep- while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?

Edgar Allen Poe

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