I have lucid dreams and I get excited when it happens and make some fun decisions. “Oh, this is a dream. Sweet, I’m gonna go do [X] now.” I always remember don’t try flying, because it was scary when I tried and jolted me out of the dream.

But here’s the thing. Once I’m awake, as I think about it, it seems like I did exactly what I wanted to do, but I realize that there’s absolutely no way of knowing whether I genuinely had control or just dreamed that I had control and made those choices. But in the end I did have control and made those choices because it’s my brain, right? And I feel like I did; it’s more like a memory than a dream. But following the same line, I could question reality.

Anyway, I’m currently cynical and think nobody actually controls their dreams, they only wake up thinking they did.

It wasn’t until ubiquitous social media that I realized lucid dreams weren’t the norm for everyone else. My default dreams are both lucid and recurring: I have the same fifty-odd dreams over and over and have the freedom to change the ending, rewind, or otherwise alter events. Oh, there’s one-offs too and not every dream is lucid but that’s what I considered a “normal” dream growing up in the previous century.