When I wake up…

I sometimes have dreams where I suspect that I’m dreaming, and therefore try to check whether it’s the case or not. When I do this, I often come to the conclusion that everything around me is in fact real and that I therefore cannot be dreaming. But when I wake up from these dreams, I’ll sometimes tell myself that actually I must have known all along, because otherwise why would I even have checked in the first place? Thus, I’ll conclude, it must be the case that I actually can tell reality apart from dreams.

However, when I’m awake, things feel unreal too, so I try to check whether or not I’m dreaming—then, I come to the conclusion that I’m not. But isn’t this just like when I am dreaming? So then, if I one day wake up and realize that all of this has been a dream, perhaps I’ll tell myself that I knew all along. By now, I’ve started to earnestly suspect that this place really must be something I’m dreaming, or perhaps something analogous to a dream. Otherwise, there is just too much that doesn’t add up. But even with that suspicion, I don’t really believe it. When I wake up and tell myself that I knew all along, it won’t be true.