Am I a tree?

Genre: Reflection
Inspiration: This article

DISCLAIMER: I am no particular fan of the cliched universe within a universe science fiction (for examples think Matrix, or Men in Black). It's a fascinating concept and makes great fiction but the more it's used to conveniently alter perceptions of "what's real" the less credible it seems to be creatively. So let me be the first to express shock that I'm exploring a related notion:

Of late, I'm taken a heightened interest in exploring creativity, and my dreams are a huge inspiration for me. Its been a while since I've recalled one in enough detail to log it, and so on Saturday morning after restful sleep and with clear recall I did exactly that (see "Dream-Show" below). Imagine my surprise hours later when I happened upon a page called "How To Have a Lucid Dream" by a chap named Charles Hamel. A number of years back, during a particularly lazy year in University (when I got plenty of sleep) I quite often recalled and logged my dreams and often hoped to make them lucid. As I rekindle this interest it seems opportune timing to once again strive for lucidity. I read the article with interest.

Ultimately, last night the question I pose in the title came to me (with curiosity rather than epiphany) and it's only partially facetious... One activity the article recommends is to ask yourself "am I dreaming" a few times a day, to establish the habit in hopes that it carries over into dreams. It seems that in order to ingrain the question you'd have to ask it quite often, with the unfortunate bi product of feeling like a bit of a loon. However, it struck me that the reason this actually works is because people recognize and discern "real" life. It's in dreaming that we can't inherently recognize our state of being. I suppose this is why I feel real anxiety when I dream about trading my motorcycle for another that I don't want or losing the enamel on my front teeth and being left with only loose hanging nerves (real dreams!)

So all of this led me to realize that while I'm dreaming and ignorant of that state, it might as well be real. It feels real (despite often being quite weird), I have real emotions and I have real interactions. It's only when I wake up that I get the sense of strangeness that comes from reflection. So I wondered if "real" life might just be some parallel dream state once removed from "sleep" and perhaps its so freaking long because I'm some long-living organism that is in a stasis where it's only logical to create this state of reality to pass the time. Logically, this led me to the conclusion that if this strange extrapolation were to be the case, then I'm quite obviously a Douglas-Fir or a Birch.

Everything surrounding me, like in my dreams, might just be a figment of my leafy imagination... But I suddenly became concerned, because one of the cautions in the article warned that too abrupt a lucid realization of a dream state might in fact cause one to wake themselves and I can't really think of anything worse than abruptly waking up to realize that I am in fact a damned tree - stuck, motionless and cold on the side of a road somewhere, or worse, in a suburban business park in Oshawa. I'm glad to say however that as nervous as I was typing this out, I have yet to jerk my barky self into wakeful appal and have as yet retained my blissful dream state.

...before anyone points out that by extending my logic you could imagine yourself as just about anything conceivable, I'd like to note that I've already thought that through. The notion is ridiculous. Either this world is real and I'm just being wistful, or I'm a tree and no one else really exists in this reality.