Hollywood director Christopher Nolan got real at a Princeton commencement speech, reminding graduates to “chase reality,” not their dreams.

For most of us, at some point in our 20s, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” becomes replaced with the much more depressingly realistic, “What do you want to be when you give up?”

Chasing our dreams seems like some elusive fantasy; yes, before the Internet maybe you could land that all-important assistant gig by showing up unannounced at your desired future boss’ office with doughnuts and dreams.

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Now, college graduates are increasingly reminded to be realistic; to be structured and goal-oriented, and to steer themselves in the direction most likely to actually get them a job.

When giving his commencement speech at Princeton, The Dark Knight trilogy and Inception director Christopher Nolan — despite being living proof that sometimes dreams and hard work can lead to success in the creative industry — spoke very much along these lines.

“In the great tradition of these speeches, generally someone says something along the lines of ‘Chase your dreams,’ but I don’t want to tell you that because I don’t believe that,” Nolan said (as quoted by The Hollywood Reporter). “I want you to chase your reality.”

Nolan drew on the concepts established in Inception, revealing that the question he’s most often asked is whether the end scene in the movie was real or a dream. “It matters to people because that’s the point about reality,” he explained. “Reality matters.”

“I feel that over time, we started to view reality as the poor cousin to our dreams, in a sense,” Nolan continued. “I want to make the case to you that our dreams, our virtual realities, these abstractions that we enjoy and surround ourselves with — they are subsets of reality.”

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He went on to state that modern technology, which has led us to spend so much time in front of screens, “is an insult to reality.”

“Communication is not everything,” he cautioned. “So much of the resources — intellectual, financial — of my generation have gone into communications infrastructure and achieved wonderful things, but perhaps not as wonderful as we claim them to be.”

So what can we do? Chase your reality; physically move the world. “It’s very important that people are really affected by what you do. I think you have limitless potential,” Nolan told the cheering Princeton graduates — and it’s words of wisdom we can all take with us.

Read more of Christopher Nolan’s great speech at The Hollywood Reporter.