A reaction to each passing episode in our lives — whether deliciously happy, or quite nice, or tolerable, unsatisfactory, or horrible — we usually tell ourselves a story which revolves around ourselves. And we get lost in that story. We fit it into the narrative we call "our life," the narrative we're so familiar with that we have come to think this is who we are. When the alarm goes off in the morning, sometimes even before we open our eyes, a story is already going. It may be the same one that came up yesterday and in just the same way. Hearing it again and again doesn't seem to stop it as we get out of bed. We can become so absorbed in it that we don't notice the warmth of the shower against our skin, the sound and unique feeling of water, the taste of the toothpaste, the birdsong just outside the window. The day goes on, the week goes on, the year goes on, our precious lives go on, and we live within these fictions as if they were real. When the alarm clock went off, we never woke up; we just went from one form of dream to another.

Sylvia Forges-Ryan, Edward Ryan, Take A Deep Breath