For me instead is because I had this sensation that the rest of the world was like a theme-park for me and those closed to me, where everybody else was acting for our sake. Pretty egocentric, eh? I was shocked when I was 5: my very old uncle died and I was like "hey! but... can we? I mean... was ...

Wow! I guess that was like living in a dream that reminds me a poem from Allan Poe that says "...life is but a dream within a dream.." :)

I guess if one is lucky enough to have a happy childhood he/she keeps believing to be the center of the world till a certain point (5-6 yrs old?), then growing up it come the time to realize that that was just a dream (or nightmare?) within a dream.