In peaceful Laos, there is little to find other than tranquility—at least for me, right now. Night has simply become a time for sleep. When 8:00 PM hits, my body signals me to sleep.

One day, I had a reason to go out at night. At some point, the night roads had become fearsome to me. I had grown slowly to familiarity. I braced my nerves and gripped the steering wheel. Yet, the car headed toward its destination composedly. As with most things, my driving skills seemed to emerge on "auto mode."

Things that were once so clear during the day were now blurred and confused by the electric lights of the night. "Ah! The night has a beauty all its own!" I exclaimed in surprise. In the restaurants decorated with colorful lights, people wore smiles like a Renoir painting; even the street stalls illuminated by a single bulb looked romantic in their own way. Beyond my expectations, the night was wonderful. It felt like tasting another world.

The night, which is meant for rest, is merely another "day" provided by artificial light for those overflowing with the energy of life. "There’s a whole separate world at night!" I said to my wife in the innocent tone of a child. Not understanding what I meant, she didn't even respond. It seemed that rather than seeing me as "unique," she viewed the charm of the night as a mere extension of the day—much like the people in Renoir's paintings—rather than sharing my melancholic mood.

Perception, like night and day, is different for everyone. Even when looking at the same thing or doing the same task, our feelings differ.

On one side of the earth, Missiles fall like rain, and people cry out for freedom from the depths of their souls with parched voices. On the other side, there is so much freedom that people scream about there being over a hundred different genders. Who was it that said humans and life must all be equal?

Thought is free. However, the leisure to think is not a freedom. This is because we cannot control it. Humans are forced to live according to the thoughts of "others" within a wheel driven by an unequal destiny. Even those who escape that framework eventually meet similar people and board the wheel once again. But their framework changes into a "Controlling Wheel" under the name of success.

Life is an "illusion." The ultimate reality of life is being born, suffering, and then dying. In terms of cosmic time, a human life doesn't even last a single second. Yet, within that short span, we become slaves to our thoughts because we think.

I now understand why there were so many Brahmins and monks in the past. I understand why their goal was to live to "attain" the self. If you do not know the "Self," you cry out your identity within the chaos of illusion and the endless cycle of the wheel, unaware that you have been branded with "Stupidity."

Everything is within me, within my thoughts. If I do not exist, the universe does not exist. Nothing exists.

Then, who am I?

(Continued)