I know space travel is unlikely in my lifetime, if ever, so my hope for seeing the planets lies with telescopes.

My real hope is that in my lifetime we'll gain telescope technology good enough to watch other worlds in crystal clear GoogleMaps quality.

I don't care if we can't communicate with them in any meaningful way, I'll be happy enough to watch, and to know that they exist.

Maybe we'll learn something.

thorin explains today the concept of "Lucid Dreaming", where a person trains themselves to constantly check if they're dreaming or not, with the hope that one day they'll make the check within a dream and thus realise they're dreaming and hopefully be able to take control of the dream.

In my younger teenage years there was a period of about a year when I got into the habit of realising within dreams that I was dreaming and was able, with practice, to take limited control of the dream.

I trained myself into this habit (I assume) due to my method of getting out of nightmares, which I had fairly often. Within a nightmare I usually ended up realising it was a nightmare and screamed at myself to open my eyes. Eventually I began to learn the "this is a dream" moment and was able to open my eyes and avoid the horrible (dreamed) alien abduction or car crash.

At some point I began to recognise the "this is a dream" part in not so scary dreams and decided not to open my eyes but to take over the dream. It worked a treat.

At such times I didn't really have full control over my dream reality, but I knew I was in a dream and was able to act in fearless ways. I always found it interesting that although I knew I was in a dream, my experience was still being controlled. I never knew what I would see, just that I could walk around it it deliberately. I would attempt to "create" something I wanted but it would be warped into extreamly strange versions of my thought.

Usually I wasted most of my thinking time in such dreams with "don't wake up!" thoughts and often, "yeah, but is this REALLY? a dream?".

At the time I had the horrible thought a few times that in a moment of madness I might come to the same "hey, this is a dream" conclusion while awake and do something stupid. However at all times even when I was consciously thinking "this is a dream, but is it really a dream?" in the back of my head I knew it was a dream or I wouldn't be asking myself...

I gained a little understanding of madness in those years.

I don't take control of my dreams anymore but I do still have dreams when I question if I'm dreaming. These days in the dream I decide it isn't a dream. That is much more frightening.

My dreams are less vivid and nowhere near long enough to begin to think the way I used to.

It was a talent I didn't have for long, but I miss it.