Life is a dream

Almost everything in the universe is dead. Almost all matter within our cosmological sight has no life. 

Nonetheless, we are used to living beings because, come on, this is Earth, lifetown. Everywhere you look in our planet, you will most certainly find some badass bacteria, or amoebas, and usually, lots and lots of animals and plants visible to our naked eye too. This has created a strange illusion; that life is abundant and normal. 

It is not, for even in our planet, the ratio of alive matter and inorganic dead matter is dominated by the immense amounts of rocks and metals found in the inner and outer layers of the planet. Life is abundant, but only in the surface, and only in small packages, being the largest the blue whale. Not even comparable to the size of a dead hill or an inanimate mountain.

Additionally, among this minority, only one known species has been able to develop consciousness. This is a topic for another day, and the definition of consciousness is far beyond extremely complicated and intricate. Even though, we have a fair mental image of what being conscious really means, and over millennia, our species has become aware of our own self, of our minds, of our bodies, our power, our qualities and defects. We are alive, and we know it, which is rather rare, among a full biosphere of ignorant bacteria all among a vast majority of dead matter all among an even larger whole, consisting mainly of dark energy and dark matter.

Whoa, we should feel unique and rare and special, for being the awakened ones. Our 7 billion bodies, with all our atoms, are the only known minority of atoms and molecules being self aware, to think profound thoughts, and wonder about the origin of the universe. We are rare, strange, awkward, and unique, and nothing could ever say the opposite no matter what.

This got me wondering about a rather unusual conclusion. Given our scarcity in the world, we are not part of the normal kind of matter. Among organic matter, we are also quite special, and therefore we are not quite the normal kind of organic matter in the Earth's biosphere. The conclusion is that, life is not the normal state of matter, and consciousness is not usual either. This is a special state of being, consciousness. I like to compare it to dreaming.

One could say that our lives are just dreams, special mysterious states of matter in which we are aware of our existence, and after a while we just die off and become the normal kind of matter again. Dreaming bears a huge resemblance with life in that sense. We fall asleep, and sometimes we enter into  an unknown mental state, we enjoy it for a bit, and then we wake up, just like life itself. It may be a longer dream, but all in all, it is a dream. 

Thanks to this special undefinable phenomenon we are able to prepare for real life, if life is real al all. Dreams are supposed to make us ready for whatever may lie ahead when we wake up, but all in all, the whole life we live might be a dream, or it might just not matter, since there may be no distinction among them after all.

Perhaps living is not dreaming and I am wrong, but to my mind, a few carbon and water molecules suddenly living and thinking is an idea rather belonging to dream worlds, not reality.  

It is going to take long to figure out the quintessence of life, how a dead body is suddenly dead and not alive, and in this even more difficult step, how consciousness comes to be, and how it seizes to be. We are dream stuff, we are dreaming all along. We cannot comprehend how the normal state of inanimate matter is, because we never were so, at least in our memory and sensory experience. All we have ever known is how to wake up and continue dreaming.

Let's just go on with our dreams as if none of this matters, but remember to never forget that we are atoms that gained self-awareness, nothing more. And as simple atoms our journey shall end, with the death of our magical consciousness, and/or perhaps, the beginning of the real 'life'. The end of this 'life' is the end of this 'dream', and maybe afterwards, the truth appears and this solemn world turns out to be what it has always been; dream land.