We spend our lives learning to read words.
Far fewer of us are taught to read dreams, myths, symbols, or the quiet patterns that repeat through a life.
I don’t believe these are supernatural messages waiting for someone to decode. I think they are forms of perception. They become useful not because they tell us the future, but because they sometimes reveal aspects of the present that ordinary language hasn’t yet caught up to.
This essay is an example of that practice.
The dream left me with a sentence I couldn’t shake.
It isn’t real. It’s a trick.
For weeks, I assumed the dream wanted me to identify the trick. Was it Disney? Consumerism? Entertainment? Capitalism? Illusion? My own life?
Eventually I realized I was asking the wrong question.
The dream was not interested in exposing a particular trick. It was asking whether I understood what a trick is.
We usually think of a trick as a deception. A magician fools the eye. A con artist manipulates trust. Someone lies.
But many of the realities that shape our lives are not lies.
