The Butterfly Dream
The former location of the April Fool’s Day EX.
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Have you ever heard the story of the “Butterfly Dream”?
One day, a man found himself in a dream, in which he was a butterfly fluttering through the sky. The dream held no profound significance on its own, but upon waking from the dream, the man mused, “Hmm, did I just wake up from a dream in which I was a butterfly? Or perhaps, it is the very man that I am here and now, who is merely a dream that my butterfly self is dreaming!”
An intriguing notion, is it not?
This concept, however, is not limited to the butterfly. The crucial point lies in the way in which we define who we are in the present moment. When you find yourself in a world that feels as if it were someone else’s “dream,” do you question whether the person standing there is indeed yourself, or if perhaps it is the world of your ideals? When you encounter such a world, can you really resign to call it a dream? Alternatively, perhaps it is this kind of thinking that pulls one toward the dream world. That is to say, where one has lost sight of the line between dream and reality.
No no, this tendency of mine to beat around the bush is a regrettable habit. Allow me to summarize what I want to say with more clarity and brevity this time.
After all, although it may have lasted for but a moment, the landscape of the dream was certainly there. It was a world far removed from the natural passage of time. And although I am uncertain whether or not it truly did occur...in the end, it is one’s own cognition, not that of one’s surroundings, that determines whether or not it was indeed a world in which you danced as a butterfly or a reality that you only wish to label as a dream.
The world he observes presents him with different perspectives over and over again. It is his mission to select one of those worlds and navigate that reality for himself.
Then, what becomes of the worlds that he does not seize?
It is a blessing for me to contemplate these unanswerable questions. How will he eventually decide whether to embrace his dreams or discard them? Or whether the world in which he walks is a dream or reality? What a shame that I cannot be present to witness this unfolding. What a truly uncharacteristic failure.
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As deleting one’s work is an act that imposes on the site, only a void of vanished text remains.
Just like a dream.
