Dreams

Do you remember ever having a dream that seemed to make sense until you woke up and starting thinking about it?

When I was a kid, I had a fiberglass bow and I used to shoot arrows with my friend. Well, one time I had a dream that in trying to string my bow I accidentally bent it. Trying to bend it back only made it worse until eventually my bow was just an unrecognizable lump. I was very relieved when I woke up and realized it was just a dream.

Isn't it strange how a dream, no matter how bizzare, can make sense while you're still asleep? The strangest things can happen and, while it can suck, doesn't seem to be irrational or even impossible. At least that's how some of my dreams can be.

Then, after you wake up, you realize that the events in your dream were so irrational that they couldn't possibly be real. In fact, you're surprised that you even believed it while you were dreaming it. But the thing about it, is that it did make sense while you were dreaming it. Once you wake up is when reality hits.

Religion is not unlike a dream. While you're in it, it makes sense. Mormonism made sense to me. It really did. Joseph Smith restored the truth along with the priesthood and now families can be together forever. The whitewashed version of Mormonism is a pretty good sounding story.

But once you wake up and see the truth, you wonder how you could have ever believed it before. Once you start thinking, it doesn't make any sense and things don't add up. Now you're thinking clearly and it makes sense, but while you were trapped in the dream, it seemed to make sense then. Only once you're fully awake, can you see that what once made perfect sense to you is now just a dream, a fantasy world. None of it was grounded in reality.

Now I'm awake.