Are We Alive, Or Is This Just an Endless Dream?

Sometimes I wonder if we are truly alive or if this is all just a dream, one long intricate illusion that feels real only because we have nothing else to compare it to. Life often moves in ways that seem too bizarre, too unpredictable, and too full of contradictions to be entirely real. How does one make sense of a world where suffering and joy exist side by side, where history repeats itself like a scratched record, and where certainty is a luxury few can afford?

I suppose this is an age-old question. Philosophers have debated it, poets have romanticized it, and ordinary people, those of us simply trying to stay afloat, have found ourselves wondering about it in quiet moments of exhaustion. If this is life, why does it feel like a cycle we can’t quite break?

And then there’s Nigeria. If any place could make a person question the nature of existence, it’s here. Because surely, heaven does not come with fuel scarcity, inflation, and leaders who seem permanently disconnected from reality. It does not require the kind of resilience that turns survival into a daily mental and physical workout. Nigeria makes you wonder if we are meant to thrive or if we’re simply here to endure.

Yet despite it all, I try to believe there is meaning in the madness. That beyond the chaos, there is wisdom we cannot yet see. That life, for all its confusion, is neither a mistake nor an illusion but a test, one designed to shape us in ways we may not fully understand until much later.

So maybe the real question isn’t whether we are alive, but whether we are awake enough to recognize the lessons woven into our struggles. And perhaps, just perhaps, if we hold on long enough, we’ll one day find ourselves in a place where everything finally makes sense.