It affected me more than I expected.

Perhaps because I had expected so much from them.

There is nothing wrong with hoping that someone will act in a certain way.

But perhaps lack begins the moment that hope becomes, “It has to be this way.”

Interestingly, those events led me toward something else.

A new action.

And yet, it was something I had wanted to do for a long time.

Something I had kept on hold suddenly began to move.

Perhaps things simply unfolded the way they were meant to.

If so, was what happened at the beginning really a lack?

Looking only at that moment, it certainly appeared that way.

But when I include what came afterward, it begins to look different.

Perhaps it was not lack.

Perhaps I had simply perceived it as lack.

I had known something like this intellectually for a long time.

I know.

I already knew.

But experiencing it was different.

It felt almost like checking an answer I had already been given.

Lately, the world feels much softer than it once did.

Like a solid object touched inside a dream.

It is certainly there.

I can feel its hardness.

But is it really solid?

Or do I simply perceive it that way?

Perhaps reality is something like that too.

I suppose I will continue to know through experience what I somehow already knew.

It is not that having money makes the fear disappear.

When the fear is released, you begin to notice what is already there.

Not as a spiritual idea.

As reality.

If there is no benefit, I can simply stop.

“But I cannot help thinking that way.”

That thought still comes up sometimes.

But there is no benefit in that either.

The metaphor is not particularly elegant, but perhaps it is like holding something filthy in your hand while thinking, “Maybe this will be useful for something.”

If so, I can simply let it go.

Nothing significant.

Still, doing them myself would have taken some time and effort.

AI handled them almost immediately.

Impressive.

Really.

I thought it would still take a long time.

I had assumed that unless I could set aside enough time, I could not even begin creating it.

It started as a small experiment.

I wanted to make something entirely personal and decided to see what would happen if I made full use of AI.

That was when I experienced what was actually possible.

I thought, this might work.

So now, I will begin giving it shape.

Little by little.

At least, that is what I expect.

Perhaps it could all move much faster than I imagine.

I am benefiting from the time I happen to live in.

I am genuinely happy that I can casually go out for a meal or have a drink again.

It is not that I want to overindulge.

Simply knowing that I can eat or drink whenever I want seems to make me feel lighter than I expected.

Have I returned to an ordinary life?

I still have regular hospital visits.

Compared with before the surgery, I certainly need to use the bathroom more often.

But I have grown accustomed to that as well.

I am learning to live comfortably with my body as it is.

I do not feel restricted.

Perhaps that matters more than whether restrictions actually exist.

Lately, I have been experiencing that more and more directly.

It is almost like a backstage crew that stops working the moment no one is watching.

Perhaps if I suddenly turned around, I might find that the background had not even been prepared yet.

That may be an exaggeration.

Still, nothing seems completely fixed or incapable of change.

No matter how large it is.

No matter how long it has been there.

Reality sometimes feels as though many layers are overlapping at once.

Not as possibilities.

Simply at the same time.

For some reason, Schrödinger’s cat came to mind.

Not because it explains this feeling.

Only because its strangeness suddenly felt more familiar than before.

This is also slightly different from saying that what we see is not everything.

It is there.

Certainly there.

We simply fail to perceive it.

Perhaps it is something like an optical illusion.

Something invisible suddenly becomes visible.

No.

It did not become visible because it appeared.

It had been there all along.

Now I notice a part of myself wanting to search for an answer.

I think I will leave that alone as well.

Perhaps truth is not something we need to search for and discover.

It simply is.

We just had not perceived it yet.

It can only be received because it is already there.

I came across those words and thought that perhaps they were exactly right.

Suppose there were a button that allowed me to receive it simply by pressing it.

If I stubbornly refused to press it and insisted on receiving without doing so, perhaps that would be the opposite of humility.

So I pressed the button.

Simply and honestly.

I was drawn to those words.

I bought the piece, and it now hangs on the wall of my home.

It was created by the husband of a therapist I have known for some time.

Until recently, he had never been involved in creative work.

After a serious illness, something changed.

Within only a few months, he was holding his first exhibition.

Now, I hear he is preparing one in New York.

Just hearing the story made me wonder,

can life really unfold like that?

Perhaps it can.

Flow is a curious thing.

It reminds me of a dream, where contradictions are somehow woven into a single story without question.

It is not that I reject reality.

Rather, I find myself wondering whether reality is far less certain than I once believed.

That question no longer feels like an idea.

It feels like the shape of experience itself.

It no longer seems strange.

If anything, it feels more natural.

Although antibodies against the virus had formed, the viral count had not decreased.

Apparently, it is a very rare case.

There is one more thing I do not understand.

Even so,

there is neither urgency nor anxiety.

There was a time when every number reminded me of how much I had spent.

Guilt came first.

This time, it did not.

That surprised me.

What I saw instead was a record of things and experiences that had already become part of my life.

It was not wishful thinking.

It simply felt that way.

Looking through them was like looking back at photographs from a journey.

Someone once said that to me.

It was probably simple kindness.

So I began using one of the modern apps.

Every so often, I meet someone I have never met before.

We talk for a while.

Then we part.

I did not begin because I expected something extraordinary.

I only wanted to introduce a small irregularity into the rhythm of my daily life.

An experiment.

Nothing more.

So far, nothing remarkable has happened.

That, too, feels meaningful.

I notice myself measuring the return against the cost.

Was it worth the time?

Was it worth the effort?

That way of thinking seems to reveal more about me than about the people I meet.

Perhaps this is not the form that suits me.

Perhaps there is another way for me to encounter people.

Even so, I would not have noticed that without trying.

But there is no need to control the path that leads to it.

That part can be entrusted.

There may be a course far better than the one you could ever plan yourself.

At least, that is how it felt.

It was not the dramatic feeling of a dream coming true.

It was simply quiet.

Simply natural.

It was not that there was no joy.

It just felt different.

Perhaps it was closer to breathing.

That question still surprises me.

Take an invoice, for example.

It was never showing me lack.

I had simply turned my back on fulfillment and was looking at the shadow instead.

That is why it appeared as lack.

Only then did the Rubin vase make sense to me.

Knowledge had become experience.

Of the four major tasks waiting for me, I have finally completed the first.

Originally, I thought they would all be finished before spring.

Things unfolded differently.

Some people were inconvenienced.

Even so, they understood.

For that, I am deeply grateful.

Once these remaining tasks are finished, I hope to return to what I had originally set out to create.

Was it a detour?

Or was it the path itself?

Perhaps I will understand that a little further down the road.

I began writing here in January 2026.

One hundred was never a goal in itself.

It simply felt like a meaningful point of continuity.

At first, I thought I would reach it in April.

Even if things slowed down, surely by May.

Then everything changed.

The diagnosis.

The examinations.

Hospitalization.

Surgery.

Recovery.

After leaving the hospital, my concentration did not return as quickly as I had expected.

More recently, the lymph node that had been removed during surgery became swollen again after a fever from a cold.

For a while, even sitting was difficult.

Today happens to be one of the better days.

Tomorrow I will return to the hospital for another examination.

It is now August.

It took nearly twice as long as I had imagined.

Still, this was never really a goal.

It is simply another point along the way.

Perhaps I will write again at two hundred.

Or perhaps I will not.

That, too, will become part of the record.

The shape of my room had changed.

Yet nothing about it felt strange.

In the world of dreams, it was simply the way things were.

Only after waking up did I realize how different it had actually been.

—

Years ago, I became interested in lucid dreaming.

With a little practice, I learned to recognize when I was dreaming.

It was much like the idea portrayed in the film Inception.

I experienced many dreams within dreams.

Looking back, none of it was particularly remarkable.

More importantly, it is not what I want to write about here.

—

There is a way of looking at this reality as though it were a dream.

I do not mean that everything can be controlled at will.

The point is something much simpler.

It is okay to relax.

Not the kind of relief that comes from giving up.

Not, “None of this matters because we all die someday.”

Rather, do not become too serious about life.

What we experience seems to follow the direction we are facing.

Our emotions quietly reveal where that direction is.

In that sense, reality is not so different from a dream.

The harder we try to force change, the less it seems to change.

Perhaps the belief that something must change is what creates the reality in which change appears necessary.

It feels like a paradox.

The things we desperately want often remain just out of reach.

To desire something intensely is also to believe that we do not already have it.

So be sincere.

But do not become burdened.

Set your load down.

Perhaps living lightly is one small way of experiencing a gentler reality.

Sitting is still uncomfortable.

And yet I find that I am coping better than I expected.

Why?

Then I remembered.

During my stay in the hospital, I had a tube inserted, and sitting was far more difficult than it is now.

Without realizing it, I had been comparing today with those days.

The comparison brought a certain sense of relief.

There is nothing wrong with that.

Still, I have also begun to notice moments when I no longer need to compare anything at all.

Those moments feel quieter.

Somehow, they feel closer to what is true.