This morning when I awoke I had a momentary feeling of disorientation. It seems I had had a very long dream.
You’ve probably had an experience like this at least once: You wake up in the morning, in your own bed, and feel as though you are in a strange place. The reason is that you had a long dream about a non-existent place, with non-existent people, which was so detailed and comprehensive that you had come to think of it as real.
For me the first moment of the experience was very jarring. Not only did I not recognize my own bedroom, but I started looking around for the people with whom I had been deep in conversation. After all, I had been their guests (or so I thought) for quite a long time, and there was still much to talk about.
The second moment of the experience was even more jarring. For it was only then that I realized that these people, men and women I felt I had come to know, would never return. Not only would I never again speak to them, but they had literally ceased to exist.
Over the course of the next several minutes, the details of this other world gradually faded from my mind. All I could remember was the intensity of the connections I had made, and the fondness I still felt for a world I could no longer quite remember.