Life is but a dream

Whenever you feel stressed out, remember that. Life is but a dream. Nothing is real. It's all a beautiful, hilarious mirage. Those people walking around, the sounds of cars driving by, the grass, the pavement, the shirt you're wearing—all part of the dream.

Speaking of dreams, here's a list of recurring dreams I've had in my lifetime:

• Floating down from the sky on a magic carpet
• Teeth falling out
• Working on a tedious project on the computer / emailing
• Discovering a new room in my house
• Dancing at da club
• Having a baby
• Forgetting about an important deadline, only to remember several weeks later

I taught myself lucid dreaming from a young age as a tactic to prevent nightmares. Whenever I felt that a dream was headed in the wrong direction, I'd work hard to get it back on track. Lucid dreaming is hard work because your sleeping brain doesn't like changing gears in the middle of something. If my dream started leading me somewhere sketchy, I'd use all my brainpower to teleport to a happy place, like my classroom at school or my living room on Christmas morning. 

One sleep phenomenon that I had little control over, however, was my sleep paralysis. That's when your brain wakes up before your body. It's terrifying because you're completely awake and can hear the sounds of the room, but you can't open your eyes or move any part of your body. It would happen to me a few times a year as a kid and probably lasted for less than a minute each time, but it was terrifying none the less. My trick for emerging out of it was to force myself to fall back asleep (or just pretend to fall back asleep - shhh, don't tell my body!). 

Sweet dreams,

Margaret

P.S. Which dream song do you prefer?