“The Day I Remembered Reality Wasn’t Real”

I’ve always been a deep thinker. This story will be clear proof of that—it goes all the way back to when I was just a kid, probably eight years old or even younger. I didn’t have language for what I was experiencing back then, but I was already wrestling with these huge ideas about life, perception, and reality. This memory has stayed with me ever since, and now I understand why.

I was maybe eight years old, riding in the back seat of the car, watching other cars pass on the highway. Just watching—like I always did. But something hit me that day, something big.

I looked at all the people in the other cars, and I knew—each one of them was living their own reality. Each one had a whole life, a whole set of thoughts, dreams, problems, memories… and none of it was the same as mine.

And then the thought came:

“What if none of them are real? What if I’m the only one who really exists?”

And it wasn’t from a place of ego or selfishness. It wasn’t a childish fantasy. It was deeper than that. It was like… something inside me remembered. I didn’t have the words back then, but I felt the truth of it:

Every single person lives inside their own reality. And those realities don’t overlap the way we think they do.

In that moment, I was holding a paradox that most adults never even touch:

• I am the center of my own universe.

• But so is everyone else.

• I may be the only one in my reality… but so is everyone else in theirs.

That thought didn’t scare me. It felt oddly natural. But at the same time, I also felt like I was thinking something I wasn’t “supposed” to think. Like it was too big. Too weird. Too… real.

And now, decades later, I understand why that moment stayed with me.

I wasn’t imagining things. I was remembering.

I was touching a soul-level truth—one that mystics, philosophers, and quantum physicists all eventually circle back to:

Reality isn’t fixed. It’s relative. Personal. Projected. Perceived.

There is no “one world.” There are 8 billion overlapping, entangled, vibrating dreamfields—all playing out at once. And each one is absolutely real… to the one who’s living it.

That day in the car, I wasn’t just being a deep kid.

I was experiencing nonduality in its most innocent form.

“They’re not real to me… but they are real to themselves.”

And I could hold both truths at once.

I share this now because I know I’m not the only one who’s had those moments—those soul flashes of what’s really going on behind the veil. Maybe you’ve had them too. Maybe as a child. Maybe in dreams. Maybe just walking through the world, feeling like you’re the only one awake inside a dream that’s both yours and not yours at the same time.

And if you have—this is your confirmation.

You’re not crazy. You’re not wrong.

You’re remembering.

And that memory?

It’s the beginning of awakening.

—Jenn