Transcript for the Piece Audio version of The Woman of My Dreams

We all know that experience: some exquisite dream, into which the alarm clock suddenly and rudely intrudes. We wake up, and our day begins.

Or does it?

Can you in fact be sure that you’re not dreaming right now -- that you haven’t been dreaming your entire life?

Could you pinch yourself? Well you could. But then how would you know that you didn’t just dream the pinch, and transition into a different dream?

Indeed I once decided to keep a log of my dreams. I quickly found that on waking I couldn’t remember the dreams I’d had earlier in the night. So I started waking up during the night to write them down. A few nights of this interrupted sleep and I was exhausted! So my body (or mind) got the better of me: I woke up one morning to discover that my notebook was empty. I had only dreamed I had woken up to write down my dreams!

So now I’ve got a problem. I am positive, right now, that I am awake and saying this. I’m also positive that I have a beautiful wife, that I have a physical body, and that other people exist, because I perceive all these things. But then again I was equally positive that I was awake and writing down dreams. And look how far that got me.

Could it be, then, that nearly everything I believe about the world is false? That even my lovely, lovely wife is only literally the woman of my dreams?