I remember the first time I ever succeeded at lucid dreaming. The thing that amazed me the most was how vivid and lifelike everything was. I remember running my finger along a wooden plank, being able to see and feel every ridge and knot in the wood. I also noticed over time that all the things people usually find that set dreams apart from reality (e.g. written text/clocks/light switches not working) seem to work just fine in my dreams. The only way I can ever become lucid is by finding some inconsistency within my own memories which tells me that what I'm experiencing isn't a direct continuation of my waking life.

My dreams are different from my waking life, though; there's something so soft and effortless about them. Even my more unpleasant dreams (I wouldn't really call them nightmares) have a sort of childlike simplicity about them that means I can't really hate them. It's much like when you play a video game until it becomes natural and you forget you're pressing buttons. More generally, it's like doing anything without really thinking about it; like breathing. The feeling of waking up from a dream is actually a lot like being reminded of breathing manually, when just a few seconds ago you weren't really aware you were breathing at all.

Sometimes I feel like my dreams are more real than reality itself. After all, life is more about what you think and say and do when you aren't concentrating on your body or state of existence. Isn't it then objectively better to live in a world where you don't have a physical body at all? I suppose it's shorter, but that hardly matters. And of course it'll all be meaningless once you wake up, but then your waking life will be equally meaningless once you die.