I’m not a morbid person — quite the opposite actually. I do, however, tend to ponder life, death and the meaning of it all way more than what could be considered a healthy amount. What happens to us, our consciousness, experiences and memories after we die is a question I often contemplate.

Inception (2010) is a movie about dreams, questioning the boundaries of reality. Among the many concepts shown in the film, one above all really struck a chord.

Cobb: “Dreams feel real while we’re in them. It’s only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange.” 

What if this life is a dream; this existence we’re experiencing nothing more than a figment of our imagination? Will death, and the transition to the reality afterwards, feel like waking from an intense dream? Often, after a dreamy sleep, when I wake up in the morning, I forget my nightly experiences almost instantly, yet fragments linger and leach through blurring the lines between what did and didn’t happen. Are moments like Déjà vu and familiarity with the one you love just echoes from a past life? Were you always mine? Have we been here before?

Saito: “Have you come to kill me? …I’ve been waiting for someone.”
Cobb : “Someone from a half-remembered dream.”
Saito: “Cobb? Impossible… We were young men together. I’m an old man.”
Cobb: “Filled with regret…”
Saito: “Waiting to die alone?”
Cobb: “I’ve come back for you, to remind you of something. Something you once knew. That this world is not real.”
Saito: “To convince me to honor our arrangement.”
Cobb: “To take a leap of faith, yes. Come back, so we can be young men together again. Come back with me. Come back…”