I Recently Had the Strangest Dream…

It felt so real!

It was such a strange dream!

I was certain about everything.

I could see everything so clearly.

I knew what things were, what they were for, and what they weren’t.

The world was made up of clear-cut objects, discrete and definable, each in its rightful place – including me.

It was the late ’90s, right at the height of the dot-com boom. I was working in tech – building websites for small companies. Then suddenly, I was helping a small ISP grow bigger and bigger. Dial-up access, call centers, post-merger integrations. Everything was moving so fast. And I could feel the excitement in it.

Then, a flash. I was back in school, then suddenly a different school – a more prestigious one. Time blurred, and now I was in a management consulting firm, working with the biggest names in tech: Microsoft, Apple, Google. I was even working alongside Vint Cerf at one point. I mean… Vint Cerf! This dream was getting wild!

Suddenly, I was older, and I was a husband and a father. How did that happen? And where did all that time go? The consulting job was gone, and I was growing another business. Then I moved houses. The new house was bigger. There were two more kids. Promotions came. Titles changed. The professional ladder extended infinitely upward. The “success” I craved was now fully mine.

And yet.

Something felt… off.

Like I had missed something monumental.

Like I had been looking right past something so obvious, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.

And then – just as I was trying to figure it out – I was suddenly awake.

Whoa!

What a crazy dream.

But it wasn’t a dream.

That was the last 25 years of my life.

It flew by in a flash.

And I was left questioning: How did I get here?

…and why is ‘Once in a Lifetime’ suddenly playing in my head?

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For decades, I was striving. For what, exactly? Material success? Security? Control? A future version of myself that would, finally, feel fulfilled?

But no matter how much I achieved, it was never quite enough.

I had spent years operating as if I were a "me" among everything "else" – an independent entity navigating a world of objects, conquering obstacles, gathering resources, “winning the game.” But now, something about that seemed... well… off – like I had lost perspective.

I started questioning the very lens through which I had been seeing the world.

Alan Watts once wrote:

“We suffer from a hallucination, from a false and distorted sensation of our own existence as ‘something separate’ from everything else. This delusion lies at the root of our deepest fears, and our moments of sudden awakening to reality are the most astonishing experiences of life.”

After a deeply profound direct experience of exactly that, it hit me.

I had been living that hallucination.

I had spent decades building an identity, securing a future, trying to “get somewhere” – but where, exactly?

I had been wondering what was wrong with me.

I had everything I was supposed to want. So why did I feel… sick?

Jiddu Krishnamurti’s words struck a chord:

“It is no measure of health to be well-adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”

What if I wasn’t the one who was sick?

What if the foundation of my mental model for everything was all wrong?

I had spent my whole adult life convinced that materialism – the idea that everything in the universe can be explained solely through physical interactions – was the only reasonable way to see the world.

Physics, math, hard science – it all made sense.

Of course it does… did.

Does it?

Can it really explain everything?

Can it explain what a true conscious experience is like?

It didn’t feel wrong. It felt… incomplete.

I liked it because it gave me some hope of control. If everything is material, then all it took was an understanding of physical states, and all could be controlled.

Could it?

Could I even control myself?

Could I actually control my emotions, my thoughts?

Of course I could!

I was the thinker of my thoughts, the controller of my mind.

I WAS THE DECIDER!

… was I?

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After spending years with meditation, finally fully paying attention, I tried to find the beginning of any… single… thought.

I couldn’t.

When you really stop – I mean, really stop – you start to notice something: Everything is connected to everything else.

Not metaphorically. Not poetically. Literally!

Try to find the exact line where what “you” think you “control” stops and everything “else” begins. Is it at the edge of your skin? Maybe your sphere of influence with other things around you?

If this is too tricky to conceptualize, try this one…

Look for the precise moment when a thought begins.

Try. Sit in stillness and wait for the next thought to arise.

Can you predict it, when it will happen? Can you stop it?

Try to control it. Command it. Force it.

You can’t.

Once I noticed this, the illusion shattered.

Sages throughout history have seen through this illusion long ago.

One of the core teachings of Buddhism, anattā (Pali) or anātman (Sanskrit), is the doctrine of “no-self” – the recognition that no fixed, unchanging self can be found in any phenomenon.

And yet, we cling to this illusion of self, believing in its permanence, grasping at an identity that is always shifting.

And the more I looked, the more I saw how I had been holding onto something that was never really there.

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The realization hit hard: everything is impermanent!

For 25 years, I convinced myself that if I built enough, earned enough, controlled enough – I would be secure.

But I wasn’t.

Because nothing stays the same.

Not our bodies. Not our identities. Not our plans.

Everything is falling, shifting, becoming.

I am not who I was last year, last week, or even five minutes ago. And yet, for most of my life, I had been holding on for dear life to an illusion of permanence.

Now…

I’m learning to let go.

This latest transition – from the materialist, striving self to something else entirely – feels bigger than any career change, any house move, any shift I’ve ever experienced.

I love to read… well, more often, listen (Audible, podcasts, speeches, you name it). But one book in particular, which I’ve both read and listened to at least a dozen times, has helped me make sense of this wild shift.

Naturally, it’s called Transitions, by William Bridges.

Bridges describes the simple truth that every transition has three parts:

1. An Ending

2. A Space Between (he calls the “Neutral Zone”)

3. A New Beginning

While the framework is simple and straightforward, I began to see just how complicated my relationship with each phase really was.

Endings? Hard. Best to move through them quickly – rip off the Band-Aid and keep going.

The “neutral zone”? Absolutely not. Not knowing? No thank you. I was a strategist; I made plans. There would be no aimless drifting, no wandering in uncertainty. The moment one thing ended, the next was already lined up, ready to go.

New beginnings? Now that I could get behind. Fresh starts, new possibilities – yeah, let’s skip ahead to the good part.

But Bridges’s words encouraged me to slow down. To recognize that each stage had a purpose. That even the parts I wanted to avoid – the endings, the uncertainty – held something I needed to see.

Endings needed to fully conclude – not just externally, but internally. Otherwise, I’d carry the baggage right into the future. And that’s exactly what I had been doing. Again and again.

I had always treated uncertainty like a waiting room – something to endure until the real thing started.

For the first time in my life, I’m allowing myself to be in that liminal space.

Here I am. Midair.

I am between worlds – between identities, between ways of seeing.

And you know what?

I kind of love it here.

For years, I have rushed through uncertainty, desperate to move past discomfort, to land somewhere solid.

But what if I don’t need to land?

What if uncertainty isn’t something to fix – but something to live in?

I don’t know if this is a brief visit or if I’ll move in permanently.

But for now, I’m just here.

Not knowing.

And for the first time in my life, it feels like the right place to be.

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So, What Now?

I don’t have a grand conclusion. Just a curiosity about where this will lead.

If you’ve ever felt like you’re waking up from an old way of seeing the world – or if you’re still half-asleep but something is stirring – I’d love to hear from you.

Maybe you’re in transition, too. Maybe you’re midair. Or maybe you’re just wondering whether you’re dreaming right now.

I don’t have answers. I certainly don’t have a five-step plan for enlightenment.

But I do have this:

A growing sense that…

• What we seek has never been missing.

• Stillness is always there, underneath the noise.

• Connection isn’t something we discover, but something we remember — a recognition of what was never disconnected.

Sometimes we forget… who we truly are. That’s okay.

Because then – we remember.

And then, it repeats. And that’s okay too.

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Background music in audio by Adi Goldstein and Friedmann