It Was Just a Dream

📬Letter #11: The Moment After You Wake Up

I often have vivid dreams.

In those dreams, I fight and yell at someone.
I run away from danger.
I travel, pack, rush to catch a plane.
I move through crowded, hectic places and functions.
I keep searching for my wallet and phone, and I meet people—sometimes strangers, sometimes old friends.

What’s interesting is that those same people—people I know in real life—often look different in my dreams. In different forms, faces, and even our relationship feels slightly different.

Almost as if we had another kind of connection, some other time, some past lives.

These thriller-movie-like scenes and moments are connected, almost like a continuous story. But there is always one specific moment—one interaction, one feeling— that triggers something strong in me.

Waking up from a dream, the feeling doesn’t leave immediately.

Anxiety, anger, and fear linger for a while.

Because of what I saw. Because of what I experienced. And because of how I interacted with the people who appeared in that dream.

And then I think—It’s just like memory.

That’s all it is.

What we replay, reconstruct, and emotional residues surfacing through images.

Nothing more. Nothing less.

Just like a memory. Once it passes, it becomes nothing but memory.

Just like the dream from last night. From both what actually happened and what was dreamed, feelings remain, leaving traces behind.

So then what is really different?

Between what I dreamed… and what I call “my life,” where every moment passes and becomes nothing but something that lives on in memory?

Why do I dissect it, analyze it, and create different versions of what could have happened? It has already passed.

In the Buddha’s teachings, there are many images used to describe this experience of life.

As expressed in the Pheṇapiṇḍūpama Sutta:

“Form is like a lump of foam… feeling like a water bubble… perception like a mirage… formations like a plantain trunk… consciousness like a magic trick.”

He evokes a simple image like children playing with sand—building castles with full attention and care, only to scatter them when it is time to leave.

Sometimes I feel like that is exactly what we are doing.

We say we are “building a life.” But maybe life is not something we build to keep.

Maybe life is something we move through— learning, slowly, how to let go.

Let go of past versions of ourselves.
Let go of people as they change, or as we part from them.
Let go of attachments to roles, identities, beliefs.
Let go of expectations.
Even let go of dreams we once thought defined us.

Every moment, once it passes becomes just like a dream.

In the Dhammapada, there is a line that feels almost too simple:

“All conditioned things are impermanent—when one sees this with wisdom, one turns away from suffering.”

Not because life disappears, but because we stop trying to hold what cannot be held.

There is only the present moment.

And even this moment— is already passing.

So what does it mean to live?

If everything becomes memory, if everything dissolves like last night’s dream— then perhaps the point is not to control it, not to perfect it, not to secure it permanently.

But to meet it.

To be aware of what is here.
To know how we are.
To see who we are being in that moment.

With clarity.
With intention.
With compassion.

If you are holding onto something right now— resentment, regret, anger, sorrow—and you’ve been carrying it for days, maybe longer—just pause for a moment and ask:

Is this any different from a dream I already woke up from?

Because at some point, this too will pass.

And when it does, it will become memory.

So gently—wake up.

Not from life, but within it.