Whose dream is this?
On the thin veil between what is and what we believe it to be.
Sometimes you wake up and for just a few beautiful, disorienting seconds you don’t know where you are. The dream was so vivid, so completely real, that coming back to your actual life feels like an interruption.
Chuang Tzu, the Chinese philosopher, once had such a dream.
As he lay comfortably in his bed, he dreamed that he was a butterfly. Dancing from one flower to another, tasting sweet nectar, drifting on summer breezes with other rainbow-colored butterflies. Suddenly, he woke up. Finding himself sitting on his bed, he realised that he had been dreaming.
“The dream seemed so real”, he thought. He looked about his crude cottage and wondered, “Well, am I the man who has been dreaming that he is a butterfly? Or am I a butterfly who is now dreaming that he is a man?”
He couldn’t tell. And maybe he didn’t need to. Maybe the dream’s role was to serve as a reminder: the veil between what is and what we believe it to be is thinner than we think.
We spend most of our lives absolutely, completely, 100% certain about what’s real.
This job? Real. This stress? Super real. This identity we’re carrying around - parent, professional, the person who always has it together or never has it together. That feels solid. Fixed. True.
Until something shifts. A conversation. A crisis. An unexpected moment of joy on a Tuesday. And suddenly the story changes.
What felt impossible yesterday seems possible. What felt urgent seems small. The person you were absolutely sure you were starts to feel like just one version. One dream among so many.
And you think: wait, which one is real?
The 9 to 5 professional and the home baker who just needs a chance. The shy introvert and the ‘let loose on the dancefloor’ dancer. The grandmother who is ‘just’ babysitting and the family’s wisdom keeper of rituals and recipes. The person struggling and the person growing stronger because of it.
They’re not opposites you have to choose between—they’re multiple truths existing in the same moment, separated only by which dream you’re paying attention to.
So here’s our invitation for this week:
Ask yourself: “What’s it like to be you lately?” Write down two responses. Not as contradictions, but as different dreams you’re living at the exact same time.
Noticing the veil shift,
Team FUEL
[The Chinese parable is sourced from the book, “Wisdom Tales from Around the World” by Heather Forest.]