Inspired by the movie of the same title.

Our waking life is infinitely shorter than every dream we ever have. I know that most of you have woken up in the morning, seeing it be some time such as 10:13. You don't have to get up just yet, so you go back to sleep. You have an intricate, complex dream, one that seems to take hours upon hours to complete. And when you wake up again, it's 10:14.

This leads me to believe that our waking life is exponentially shorter than our dream state. But how can anyone be sure which is which?

When you die, you have about 6-12 minutes of brain activity, even after the rest of your body shuts down. What happens in those few minutes? It could be your whole life, being looked at as a memory from the perspective of someone who has already died. 6-12 minutes of dream state is an entire lifetime, but compared to waking time, it's insignificant; enough time to smoke a cigarette, enough time to have a small conversation, enough time to finish that last bit of coffee, enough time to catch the bus.

Why is it that a dream's minute is infinitely longer than a waking minute? Is there some sort of escape that our brain needs during our sleep? There's an explaination for dreams, sure, chemicals and everything else. But why does it seem to take so long to finish a dream?

After all, who knows if we're awake or not? Ever have dreams where you seem to 'wake up', but are still trapped within a dream? False awakening is what it's called. But what if every time you woke up, it was just another dream? Every time you closed your eyes, you wake up somewhere else and begin again?

What's real, ladies and gentlemen, is the fact that life is one long, continuous moment. One in which someone's asking "Are you ready to go?" We keep answering "No, not yet.", but in the end, we're ready to go into eternity. We eventually say yes.

But what causes that, as well, is a mystery. What's to say that answering the question with an affirmative doesn't just lead us to another dream to wake up from?

And here lies the problem. Is all of existence a sham, an elaborate dream-hallucination I've created inside my head? Are all the theories that hold the universe together just fake? Ask yourself these same questions and you might look at life a little bit differently.

that was complex,sorrta weird, slightly scary, and the kind of thing that really just makes you wonder...

I despise my dreams. Most of them, anyway.

Perhaps. But I just don't trust reality enough to believe it lied to me.

1) My alarm clok has always prevented me from finishing my dreams (and last nights was about X8... :()

2) No, this is not a hallucination in your head - I exist. Therefore, by my proof, existence is a hallucination from MY head, thank you!

3) I'm like Doc - I'd never ride the MMX Command Mission AirBus to a Marching Band competition in the middle of the winter on a racetrack from Star Wars Episode I: Racer. It's impossible - not the dream, the fact that I still remember that game so vividly... Yeah, I can tell when I'm awake, thank you...

*wakes up*

What was I dreaming of last night? Interordi? Wow, what was I thinking... *lulls off into... "reality"*

Haha, that post wins Mega X.

Also I'm like Doc. I realize I'm dreaming alot of the time, so if there's a..person with a gun for instance, I'll actually say "this is a dream..so I'll just turn invisible and avoid getting hit" and do so.

You say of course, that you know you're dreaming, which is a very valid point. If you know you're dreaming then how could you be in a dream world?

Well, what I'm talking about here doesn't only pertain to dreams, but rather to death in general. Who's to say that our lives aren't lived out fully again after we've died and have that brain activity? The brain wouldn't be able to tell the difference, and neither would your body, quite frankly, due to the fact that your mortal life has ended. So, therefore...

Are you alive? Or are you dead?

Also;

Oh really now? Well, I can see and feel and smell and hear and taste everything around me, but that doesn't necessarially mean it's all real, now does it? The information is all percived by my brain, which is what we're talking about here. So maybe this is still all an elaborate ruse, created by our brain so that we could experience what we would call a 'life'.

I think, therefore I am.

Are you now? Might it not be better as to say "I might be thinking, therefore I might be existing"?

I sometimes have dreams that are quite "real". Sometimes a bit of weird stuff happens, but then again, during waking time, that happens, too. When something really crazy happens (killer ducks attacking me when I am walking around in all red, yellow and pink with a hat on, after I just had a cup of lava and sandwiches with dinosaurus meat FE), then I am pretty sure it's a dream. But if I can't tell the difference (my mind somehow refuses to think things are dreams while I am dreaming, while I am open to the fact that I might be dreaming even while I am pretty sure I am awake), then I might wake up, believing that I have a test for English and have to be at school at 8:30, while I don't have English on that day at all and need to be at school at 10:10. I have come to the conclusion I usually don't talk in a dream of mine, so now I just need to convince my mind to accept the fact that when I am unable to speak, I might just be dreaming.

The fact that I can reason and think is all the proof I need to confirm my existence.

I thought you said you didn't trust existence enough to think it lied to you.

Yes. Yes I did.