"...All that we see or seem/ Is but a dream within a dream..."

Well, it is May already and I just can't believe it!  I will be moving to Eugene in a little over a month, starting school on June 20th, and the mayhem will begin.  Is this the consistency of life that I had hoped for?  I believe so.  Life seems so strange to me sometimes, I don't know what to make of it.  One moment you know what you want to do, then the next you're questioning yourself.  I know this is what I want to do, but I'm scared of the "after life," if you will.  What's after getting my Master's?  Obviously I will be hoping, praying, wishing for a good job somewhere, but is that it?  Will that be my "career" for the rest of my life?  It's so weird to say, and think, but it's something everyone thinks about...I hope.  I'm only 23 and sometimes I feel way too young to be trying for my Master's and eventually being a teacher...  But I'm not.  "This is life, Sada."  That's what I have to tell myself often. 

I am reminded of a great time in my life when I was reading poetry, fiction, non-fiction, essays, by some of the best authors known to man.  And I keep coming back to this poem by Edgar Allen Poe.  It was one of my favorites when I was growing up, but I didn't understand it, and now when I read it something just clicks about life and living.

A DREAM WITHIN A DREAM

Take this kiss upon the brow!
And, in parting from you now,
Thus much let me avow--
You are not wrong, who deem
That my days have been a dream;
Yet if hope has flown away
In a night, or in a day,
In a vision, or in none,
Is it therefore the less gone ?
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream.

I stand amid the roar
Of a surf-tormented shore,
And I hold within my hand
Grains of the golden sand--
How few! yet how they creep
Through my fingers to the deep,
While I weep--while I weep!
O God! can I not grasp
Them with a tighter clasp?
O God! can I not save
One from the pitiless wave?
Is all that we see or seem
But a dream within a dream?
-Edgar Allen Poe

It's interesting how the author changed his mind at the end of this poem.  In the first stanza he says factually, "All that we see or seem/ Is but a dream within a dream."  Then the second stanza he asks, as if someone could answer the hardest question asked, "Is all that we see or seem/ But a dream within a dream?"  I wonder how even the smartest or intellectually gifted philosophers would answer this question.  Is this life a dream?  I wonder sometimes.  I am thankful for this life I have, this meaningful life is something worth while.  I know I will do great things and make many proud, but it's getting past the clouds of doubt and the bits of hysteria that go on inside my heart.  My heart is its own entity, it thinks for itself sometimes.  I can't control it, it just does what it wants.  My soul, it floats along like a hummingbird does--very quietly and with a tiny buzz about it, ready for anything.

So I ask you now, "Is all that we see or seem/ But a dream within a dream?"