I had just returned from a truly beautiful and magical Tamil Hindu Christian wedding. A few days and a thousand miles later, as I was heading out to work, I was talking to a very good friend who was with me throughout the nuptials.

The conversation was just like the ones we love to have — about life, love, God, the wedding, and far beyond. But she expressed a sentiment that left me in shock. She told me she would now have to “wake up and tackle reality.” I was hurt. Hurt to hear her consider all of the beauty we had experienced at the wedding not as reality, but merely a dream or an escape from reality.

Why is the “dream” a synonym for the sheer beauty?

I sat there, in a subway wagon, trains passing by, watching oblivious faces, diving deep into their cellphone screens, engaging in their daily routines, reading newspaper articles (profound or otherwise), chatting with their friends. All the while I remained filled with the love I’d shared with the married couple and their friends, whom I had laughed with, cried with and rocked the dance floor with.

But how could this possibly be a rare or dreamlike incidence in our lives? I’ve heard the sentiment so often before. I heard it just hours after our team had won the world championship, I heard it just days after our grand graduation, I heard it after a fantastic trip swimming with dolphins in the salty sea, kissing giraffes and hugging baby elephants at dawn. And I have talked to friends of mine who hear these words too. So I am tempted to ask, almost shout — why? Why is it that we experience these mesmerising moments, yet consider them only dreams? Why is “dream” a synonym for the sheer beauty imbued in daily life? And why is reality considered so bad, so different from our dreaming?

Why is it, that we don’t live our reality the way we see our dreams?

I refuse to believe it. I refuse to believe that I cannot live out my dreams. I want to find joy even in my daily routine, and enrich it with the beauty inherent in the gift called life. I want to talk, laugh and celebrate with people on a daily basis, and if it doesn’t happen today, it will happen the next day or maybe the next week. The point is, that it will happen. It will happen over and over again. So the dream never stops! It is within our power. It is our choice — to live our lives the way, as weird as it might sound, as if it were somebody’s wedding — the celebration of somebody’s love, every single day. And after all, it really is.

The person that you are today, and the person that you will become a few years from now, is defined by what you choose to believe in, by the people you choose to be around, by books that you read today, by the sources you choose to draw your energy from, by the dreams that you dare to follow.

So I dare you to not wake up, but to stay forever awake in this dream that the world gave us. Do not leave your dream, lead your dream instead.