Two Different Worlds
A light smile spreads through the air like falling leaves, and behind that smile hides a world that doesn’t exist on our maps. There, time has stopped, or maybe time has no meaning at all. Where hunger means only the stomach’s call, and satisfaction means a handful of rice and the sweet smell of soup. This is what living in the present truly looks like – a world with no yesterday, no tomorrow, only this moment’s existence.
The person standing with dusty feet has a light in their eyes that defeats all our smart calculations. Their eyes have no dark shadow of worry, no fear of the future, no pain from the past. There is only the clear flow of the present, where each moment is a complete life by itself.
We who call ourselves normal are actually quite strange. Our heads spin with thousands of thoughts about the future, countless sorrows from the past pile up inside us. We carry burdens that have no weight, yet these invisible loads break our shoulders. Our hearts hold pains that maybe never happened, or maybe will never happen.
But this person, whom we call crazy, lives in a different kind of freedom. Their freedom is this – they don’t think about tomorrow. They don’t plan what to eat next week. For them, this moment’s hunger is the most real thing, this moment’s joy is the most true.
The Hotel Floor and the Invisible Prison
Watching them sit on the floor and eat, it seems like they’re from another planet. For them, dignity means nothing, social position means nothing. There is only hunger and its relief. Only this moment’s satisfaction. Even when offered chicken and meat, they want only simple food – rice, soup, eggs. Even in their choices, there is a kind of honesty that our greedy eyes cannot see.
Their laughter holds a mystery that is much more alive than our serious faces. Maybe they see things our eyes cannot catch. Maybe they hear things our ears cannot receive. When it seems like they’re arguing with someone, that someone might not be from our world. Maybe they’re talking with some voice inside themselves, maybe they’re discussing with someone from their own world.
Tears come to our eyes watching them. But why do these tears come? From pity? From sympathy? No, actually these tears come for ourselves. We understand that what we call normal life might actually be a complex puzzle. What we call happiness might just be an illusion. What we call a meaningful life might just be a race with no finish line.
This person has no life goals, yet their life has a completeness that we cannot find even after achieving all our goals. We dream about the future, we plan, we set targets. But under the weight of these dreams and plans, we lose the present. We seem to have joined a race where running is the purpose, not arriving anywhere.
Dirt sticks to their feet, but that dirt is like their roots. Under our clean shoes, where is our connection to that hidden earth? We rose from the soil but forgot the soil. We look up at the sky but don’t feel the ground under our feet.
In their way of eating, there is a satisfaction that we cannot find in our most expensive restaurants. Each bite of rice is a blessing to them, each spoon of soup is a celebration. For them, food has no price – only taste. Only the simple joy of filling the stomach.
The Question of Time and Reality
We eat food, but while eating we think about other things. We are in the present, but our minds stay somewhere else. Our bodies are in one place, our minds in another. But when this person eats, they are completely in the eating. They have no division, no doubt.
How does the world look through their eyes? Maybe much more colorful, maybe much more alive. Maybe they see beauty that our eyes miss. Maybe they feel truths that our intelligence cannot measure. We think in complex ways, they live in simple ways. There is a profound mindfulness in their every action, a simplicity of life that we have somehow forgotten in our endless pursuit of more.
What is their worth as a human? How does society see them? But do dignity and social recognition really determine a person’s value? Or is a person’s real worth hidden deep in their existence, in the naturalness of their living?
Our tears are not for them, but for ourselves. We cry because we understand that maybe we have lost something that they still have. Maybe we have entered such a complexity that we have forgotten the way out.
Their experience and our experience are stories from two different worlds. We think our experience is correct, our understanding is complete. But going near them, it seems like maybe we are missing something. Maybe hidden in our so-called normalcy is an abnormality.
Is our relationship with time natural? We feel sad about the past, worry about the future. But the moment we are in, we don’t fully feel that moment. We seem to have become slaves to time, when time was created to serve us.
In their laughter there is a kind of freedom that our serious faces don’t have. In their eyes there is a fearlessness that our careful eyes don’t have. In their life there is a simplicity that our complex lives don’t have.
We search for security, but in searching for security we lose life’s naturalness. We want respect, but for respect we give up our true selves. We want success, but in the race for success we forget life’s real taste.
Being near them, it seems like life might not be so complex. Maybe life is just living, just feeling, just being in this moment. Maybe we ourselves have made life complex with all kinds of wants and needs, duties and responsibilities, shame and honor.
Their existence puts us face to face with questions. Their way of living challenges our familiar measurements. Their naturalness stands opposite to our controlled lives.
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