I had a weird moment in a strange dream last night. It was a half-lucid dream. I knew I was dreaming, but I didn’t have any conscious control over the world.
There was an old woman in the dream, and I asked her: “If you’re dreaming, and you know it’s a dream, what does it mean?” And she thought for a moment, then said: “Nothing.”
Then I asked: “What about if you don’t know it’s a dream? Then what does it mean?” And she responded: “Everything.”
It’s kind of a paradox, isn’t it? If her words are true, then they shouldn’t mean anything, because I knew I was dreaming. But if they’re meaningless, then she was telling the truth, which means it wasn’t meaningless.
Earlier in the dream, I was discussing existentialism with two other guys who I thought were smarter than me. Then I realized that when you’re discussing existentialism with figments of your imagination, you usually have the upper hand.