The Day Everything Stopped

There are no other beings besides you. But you are all of them.
— Huang Po

There was a time when I believed that life came with instructions. That there was a manual, a guide, a map that could be followed to reach a destination called “happiness.” I was that kind of person—the one who makes plans, the one who makes lists, the one who believes that with enough effort, you can achieve anything. And it worked, until the point when it simply stopped working.

I remember the day with the precision of a broken clock that still tells the exact time twice a day. It was a spring Saturday. Light poured through the windows with that quality that painters call “liquid gold.” I had achieved what I thought would make me complete: a respectable career, a nice apartment, relationships that pretended to be okay. And yet, as I sat in that room bathed in gold, I felt an emptiness so profound it seemed to have physical substance.

It wasn't exactly depression. Or maybe it was—but of a kind that psychologists don't yet have a name for. It was the feeling of living someone else's life. As if I were an actor who had learned his part so well that he had forgotten he was an actor.

In the months that followed, I did what many people do: I started blaming external factors. I changed jobs. I ended a relationship that should have ended years ago. I traveled. I read self-help books that promised transformation through positive techniques. All of this was helpful, to a certain extent. But it was like dusting off a cracked mirror: no matter how shiny you made it, the crack remained.

And then, on a particularly creative sleepless night, I came across a video on an unlikely website—it featured a Buddhist monk talking about suffering. He was nothing exceptional. He wasn't charismatic or mesmerizing. He was just an elderly man, dressed in saffron-colored robes, saying very simple things in a very clear way.

He said something like, “You suffer not because life is bad. You suffer because you want life to be different from the way it is.” It seemed absurd. It seemed impossible. And yet, something in my body recognized this as truth – not as an intellectual truth, but as a truth that came from a deeper place, like the memory of something you've always known.

At that moment, I began a journey that lasted several years and that, honestly, has not yet ended. I traveled to Asia. I spent months in silent meditation retreats—silent not only in terms of sound but in terms of all forms of communication. I read classic Buddhist texts, from the Pali Canon to Tibetan teachings. I studied with monks who had spent fifty years in remote mountains. And, more importantly, I began to apply these teachings in my own life, in ways that were both mundane and radically transformative.

What I discovered was not what I was looking for. I didn't find a formula for happiness. I did not find a technique to eliminate suffering. What I discovered was far more revolutionary: I discovered that the path to freedom runs through suffering, not around it. That compassion is more important than achievement. That silence is more eloquent than any speech. And that the fullest life possible is not one in which everything goes smoothly, but one in which you deeply understand how to respond to what is given.