There’s something almost mystical about waking up in the evening after a short nap. It feels as if part of our consciousness remains in a dream, so close to our waking state that the boundaries between them blur—a sensation almost physical, like the ingredients of a Bloody Mary cocktail mixing together. The thick, rich tomato juice of intertwined dream fragments clouds the crystalline clarity of what we call wakefulness.
Of course, no one truly knows which of these states is “real.” But I hope the one in which I am awake is, at the very least, more conscious. Yet, like Kruger’s hat, vivid images from my brief nap—bizarre scenes, familiar faces—linger with such intensity. These images bring real feelings, experiences, emotions—things we casually label “reality,” forgetting that this reality exists only for our world and fails the classical tests of existence: it cannot be measured, and so, by those standards, it does not exist.
Much like in a dream, we sometimes wander through this material world, pretending we are just sacks of meat and bones. Alongside this physical existence, we each carry inner worlds—woven from thoughts, images, feelings, and emotions—as well as meanings and knowledge about “how things really are.” Yet we seldom realize that all these meanings are inventions of our own making. They never truly existed and will not exist beyond our creation.
Still, we exist—little engines of energy shuttling ourselves from home to work and back on rails that feel real but are not. We rarely stop to consider that we are not locomotives bound by these tracks; we invented the rails themselves. And that we can go wherever we want, and, if we choose, turn away from the path.
From childhood, we are told, “The train will only go where the tracks lead.” So we rush from one station—Birth—to another—Death. We fear turning off the tracks into the open fields of life.
Why? Because the tracks are marked “safe for survival.” But in those fields, there are snakes, and the wind blows strong from the river.
Life follows its own unpredictable path, and we follow ours.
