In a small café on the edge of the city, where the wooden tables were worn and time had left its marks on the walls, a writer sat before a cup of coffee from which a faint curl of steam rose, like the last breaths of life. Suddenly Albert Camus appeared, his face tired and his eyes full of questions, and took the seat opposite her.
Camus (quietly, as though whispering into the void): "The only truly serious philosophical question is whether to kill yourself or drink a cup of coffee. Everything else is detail. We are born into a meaningless world and confront an unforgiving absurdity. Do we choose eternal silence, or do we choose a small moment of warmth?"
The writer (staring into her cup before looking up): "I refuse suicide—not because it is a sin, as they say, but because it is surrender. The absurd is not defeated by escape, but confronted. I write to declare that I am here, even if my existence is fleeting, even if it ends in extinction. This cup of coffee is not salvation; it is a declaration that I will hold on to life, if only for a moment."
Camus (with a sad smile): "Yes, the absurd does not disappear, but it opens a door to revolt. To choose writing instead of silence, coffee instead of the precipice—that is true rebellion. We possess no ready-made meaning, but we can create a moment of beauty amid the ruins."
The writer (placing her hand around the cup as if embracing the whole world): "Coffee is not merely a drink. It is a symbol of refusing to vanish too quickly. I write to say that a woman is not a shadow or a servant to sacred texts. I write to prove I can face the absurd without illusions, without Heaven or Hell, with no promise to await—only this cup warming me now."
Camus (raising his head as though addressing the sky): "Then let us drink our coffee and leave suicide to the precipice waiting for us all. The absurd will remain, but we will face it with our words, our revolt, and one last cup of coffee declaring that, if only for a moment, we chose life."
The reflection contains the description, emotions, and symbolism intended by the original note: the café, the cup, the precipice, and the philosophical dialogue. The note then asks whether the title should remain "The Last Cup of Coffee" or be shortened to "A Cup of Coffee" for greater directness. The title is reaffirmed as "The Last Cup of Coffee."
End of reflection
SLEEP PARALYSIS
The question remained silent, yet screamed inside her—a muffled cry groaning beneath the whips of time, decisions, events, and even wishes. It kept trembling on her lips, whispering deep within her, even when she tried to ignore it: What if this quiet road were the one that led to the deepest kind of love, to the innermost reaches of the self, to the calmest territory of inner peace?
He stood before her, cold as a frozen statue, and answered with scorn.
He: "You are cold. Arrogant for no good reason. You have withdrawn so far from the world that you understand nothing about it. You are conceited, domineering, sharp-tongued, and probably wrong about nearly everything. Whatever beauty you once possessed has faded—or at least lost its effect. The youthful spirit is gone, along with the desire you thought was a weapon you could one day use to compensate for what you lacked. Or so you imagined. How shallow and foolish you are!"
She remained composed, watchful, and quietly confident. She turned her back on him in complete disregard.
She: "I did not want to lose myself. I built a fortress to protect me from your evils—or rather, from your ignorance and stupidity. I did not close the door on the world or raise this stronghold between us except to protect myself and preserve the inner peace your masculinity and foolishness had devoured. How many times did I ask you to be careful with my feelings? How often did I tell you that once you lost me, you would never see me again, no matter how much time passed? When my heart and feelings close, they never reopen. But your meaningless, overbearing masculinity made you blind and deaf to me. You interpreted everything I did, every reaction to your stupidity and coldness, however you pleased. You branded me with the ugliest labels and belittled me, especially in front of others. In reality, you were concealing your own inadequacy and helplessness—the inferiority you always felt in my presence—by criticizing me and making cheap, desperate attempts to diminish me in my own eyes and in the eyes of others.
"You built a mask out of your delusions and then became like someone who tells a lie and eventually believes it. Behind that mask you hid your sense of inadequacy, your helplessness, and your foolishness. You were never a whole man, never confident in yourself, and you never understood me. A glass barrier stood between us. If I tried to break through it, it would slice my veins. I could see you behind it, but I could not reach out without being cut. It was a frightening, cold wall of thick, sharp glass."
His voice tightened with resentment and revulsion.
He: "You should be more honest and transparent. Admit that you never wanted me, that you never missed me as a woman should miss a man, that you never loved me in the first place. If you had wanted to, you could have broken through the barrier. When a woman wants something, she acts; your cunning is great and your schemes endless. But you chose to let that barrier grow, become larger, colder, and sharper. You liked having it there. You wanted the distance. Now you complain and reject me while accusing me of stupidity and neglect. You are a fraud."
She stood, her bitterness stiffening into resolve.
She: "I said I was protecting myself and building a fortress. I did not choose it freely. You forced me to build it, without even realizing what you were doing. And I am glad it happened. I consider myself fortunate that this very barrier opened new horizons for me."
He stared at her, incredulous and mocking.
He: "You are proud of what you have become? Happy with the barrier that brought you to the threshold of loneliness and emptiness? Are you deceiving yourself, trying to raise your own worth so that you do not have to admit that you failed, that you are weak, that you could not build a complete life or a family? Do you hide behind a mask of pride and liberation, pretending to be proud of the wall that separated you from me? What a fool!"
Her confidence was edged with revulsion, impatience, and weariness.
She: "You will never understand what I mean. Your ability to comprehend is limited; your narrow outlook will prevent you even from trying to understand me. My strength, you fool, lies in the solitude you mock. It is a kingdom whose every corner I built through struggle and sacrifice, until I finally escaped your cruel rock, which had blocked my breath and hidden the light and air from me. I built a kingdom out of my solitude, a world that gave me strength and authority. I explored the deepest recesses of myself and broke the cursed chain that had always cut into my wrists. I hated it from the very first moment, because it robbed me of myself and overwhelmed my whole being. Every night I looked into the mirror and saw a deep crack no one else could see—a fracture in my soul, a division within my being—and asked in sorrow: Who am I? What am I? I could no longer find myself. My own self had become lost to me in your barren desert, a wasteland full of hyenas and deadly snakes, sunk in darkness beneath a scorching sun.
"Even a desert can sometimes inspire, but not yours. Your desert is repellent and desolate, covered in thorns beneath a shroud of pitch-black darkness, foul in color, smell, and touch. It is a wilderness full of monsters that devoured my identity and nearly destroyed my existence. My strength lies in my solitude, in the door I slammed shut against your dark, loathsome presence, which had weighed upon me. I will never open that door to your storm again. You would make me a miserable feather at the mercy of furious winds, foul with the stench of carcasses, filth, and refuse."
She turned toward him, disgust written across her face. "Do you know what those foul smells are? They are the stench of the relationship that once bound me to your cursed chain. That time is over. It will never return, whatever the cost. It was a relationship that sent me spinning in a vicious circle, looking for the missing link in a failed social order made entirely of false masks. I always felt I was living in a farce, playing a role that was not mine. The false role, burdened by the shackles of that cold relationship disguised as virtue, was never meant for me. The partnership was filthy with hypocrisy and deceit, as though we were acting in a ridiculous television series or a badly written play, with feeble dialogue and a threadbare plot.
"You fool! Did you mistake my strength for weakness, my solitude for escape or defeat? No. A thousand times no. My solitude is royal strength; it has made me blue-blooded. It has raised me above every woman who remains a humiliated captive, imprisoned in a tangled, distorted relationship or a failed performance. I am a free queen in an age of slaves."
He could barely contain his anger.
He: "So you decided to live alone, to dispense with me—and with all men? You boast of your solitude and your own kingdom, calling yourself blue-blooded?"
She: "A man like you cannot understand. While others—women and men alike—try to fill themselves through external contacts and social approval, I turned inward. I made contact with myself and discovered who I was. I searched my depths and brought out treasures of wisdom and knowledge, then polished them into a jewel of literature, creativity, and writing. I shaped a message in my own blue blood, the royal blood of freedom, put it in a bottle, and cast it into the vast ocean of life, certain someone would find it and carry it forward, shouting its words aloud."
He smirked as though exposing her.
He: "But that is not how you used to feel. You once dreamed of love and made it your god, the ruler of every decision. You told me of your adolescent dreams: without love, you would choose no one and might not even choose to live. Love, you believed, would lead you to your other half and to paradise, and you would sacrifice anything for it. Wasn't love the eternal crown of your kingdom? Now you are trying to deceive me, pretending to have shed your romantic skin. No one can escape their own nature or change their blood. You still seek love. Be honest: you never accepted it from me because you wanted it from someone else. I was never your dream boy or the man you had imagined. You projected your sick fantasies onto me, then accused me of everything and turned life into rejection, hostility, and conflict."
She: "You said it yourself: that was when I was an adolescent. You have admitted it was once. The past tense matters. That naïveté ended; it will not return. Even if others cannot change their skins, I have done what you call impossible, you weak traditionalist. You have always followed the herd, flattering hypocrites to win their favor even when you despised them. You wear a false face and march with the crowd. You choose whatever identity pleases your society so that everyone will approve of you, rather than the identity that pleases you.
"You were never my man. Neither you nor any other man has ever been, or ever will be, mine. You were a shackle that cut my wrists. My only—and greatest—mistake was that I once gave too much and dreamed too much. I gave until I exhausted all my old wounds. I have not rejected love, nor stopped believing in it, as you claim. I have rejected what others call love: cheap, possessive attachment, false and self-serving, shackled by desire and appetite. It is a sickness, not love; an illusion, not truth; a deceptive mirage, never a certainty.
"Love is an ocean too vast to be contained in this filthy relationship, this partnership surrounded by hypocrisy, restrictions, boredom, and coldness. From its first day the relationship yawned like a frail, sick, cold old woman longing only to die and rest. I put that wretched, exhausted old woman out of her misery because her endless wailing had narrowed my chest, split my head, and stolen my sense of self. I killed the old woman that was this toxic, soul-destroying relationship. Even love—or what you call love—becomes a chain and a disease when forced into that narrow, ridiculous frame, whether inside a hateful partnership or outside it.
"Love is far greater than that. It is love of an idea, of a principle, of exploring the depths of the self; love of freedom. Love is a message, a cry sent out to the world and to humanity. It is remaking the world through your ideas, leaving your mark on the universe and declaring, 'Here I am.' Love is refusing to surrender and fighting for your purpose. It is spreading truth—or at least its outlines. It is lighting a candle in the minds of those around you, in the darkness of life, so they can reshape their own thoughts. That is love. I arrived at this understanding after freeing myself from my old naïveté and then breaking the cursed chain you claimed would fulfill some of my dreams.
"I drank from that rushing river, believing it was sweet, only to fill myself with water that could neither quench my thirst nor heal my wounds. With you, I was like someone fleeing the scorching sun only to take refuge in fire. How miserable I was when I was caught in your web—or in someone else's. You all sat on my chest for too long. I watched the days of my life pass through a storm of emptiness and terrible silence that exhausted me, devoured my selfhood, violated my freedom, and nearly destroyed me. I stood by in shock, fighting windmills, trying to steady my confusion and comfort my sorrow, patting the years of my life and my future on the shoulder as they nearly disappeared beneath the lashes of your ignorance, stupidity, and masculine obstinacy. A vast gulf between your person and my own self, identity, and thought tore me apart. Then it was time to leave—and return to myself.
"How wretched and foolish you men are! You are creatures of folly. Your place is among backward crowds, tribal societies, and the underdevelopment of the Third World. We—the free women who have liberated ourselves in an age of slaves—belong among civilization and progress. See how wide the distance is between my station and yours, you fool. You sold me a great lie, which I believed and lived inside for years. But now, at last, I have awakened. My whole being has risen in revolt. I am removing from my chest a heavy, dark stone that paralyzed me and threatened to erase me. I have learned the secret, and there will be no going back. My solitude is the chief executive of my freedom, mind, and awareness. I make my own decisions now, without needing to consider how they affect another party. I am president of my own republic.
"You exhausted my memory and filled it with every kind of worry and ruin until I nearly aged or died of grief, watching myself burn like a tiny candle in your pitch darkness. I was like someone planting seeds and watering barren land where no crop could grow. My mind grew old inside your toxic relationship. Now it is young again, full of freshness and vigor, building a bright future whose light you always tried to extinguish. I was asleep; now I am awake. I no longer care whether you stay or leave. In truth, I want you gone and I will work toward that end. My solitude saved my life, and I will not abandon it for any creature. I am courting myself, speaking with myself, and living again."
He searched desperately for words with which to conceal his flaws. "How cruel, arrogant, and domineering you are!"
She interrupted him firmly. The scene shifted to a cold intellectual space lit by the dry light of truth. She stood upright, while he clung to the fading shadow of male authority.
She: "Stop, man. Do not summon your old vocabulary; its illusions have expired. You were a failed laboratory experiment in my life, and I emerged with definitive results: the love you sold me was a chemical substance that evaporated quickly, and the traditional marriage you offered was an attempt to enslave a person under the name of 'home.' I tried to be loyal to you. I tried to ignore my mind and humble myself before my heart, hoping to find a human being in you. Instead, I found a wife expected to serve by day and act as a vessel for your desires by night."
He: "But I was the man! Didn't I give you safety? Didn't my religion provide authority and protection? Nature says you are the weaker part and I am your support. Why reject the nature in which women were made? I was not betraying you; I was exercising a natural right given to me by society and history."
She (with a cold laugh): "Nature? What kind of nature sanctifies inferiority? Your patriarchal religion, which elevated your degraded status, is merely a myth manufactured by backward societies, especially in places where ignorance flourishes and minds are shackled by legends and delusions. But today I have awakened. Once you—and your religion—left my life, the air became clean again and the colors returned to my soul after fading beneath your shadow. The farther I move from you, the more whole I become. My happiness becomes complete only as your presence diminishes within me."
He fell into a pit of fear and collapse, realizing that he faced a woman whose resolve could not be broken by worn-out emotions. She left him behind, wreckage from a bygone era.
Her final words: "Go back to your tribes of ignorance and superstition. Your place is in the depths; mine is at the summit, where true sovereignty belongs to those who possess reason and freedom."
End of reflection
THE GAP
In a thunderous expanse of silence, a wolf stood tall, a creature with a sharp, instinctive nobility in its eyes, facing a human being swollen with pride in his own species and convinced of his superiority over all other living things.
The human (with pious arrogance, approaching cautiously): "Why are you looking at me like that, wolf? Get out of my way. I have a weapon, and I am not afraid of you. If you imagine for a moment that you can devour me or attack me in this silence, you are mistaken. Not only do I have a weapon; I am human. I think, analyze, understand, and reason. My mind enables me to avoid any danger. I am nobler and higher than you. Do not let pride mislead you into thinking you can frighten me or that I am inferior because I am vulnerable. God has favored me over all His creatures and subjected you, an animal, to serve me. One bullet could kill you, and I could make use of your fur and skin in countless ways. Move aside, and stop staring at me with that foolish defiance. I am superior because I am human, the finest of creatures, and God made you to serve me. Know your place. I am God's vicegerent on earth and master of this planet."
The wolf (in a deep voice, sharp as a hard thought): "I did not stand in your way to harm you, devour you, or belittle you. I stopped to look at you and ask where this difference between us came from. Who made this vast distance, this bottomless gulf that placed you above and me below simply because I am an animal? I wanted to investigate it for myself: what distinguishes you from me, and makes you deserving—according to your own account—of higher rank, honor, and dignity?"
The human laughed loudly, contemptuously.
The human: "What a ridiculous joke! What stupidity, to turn the order of things upside down. Are you so foolish that you block my way to investigate the difference between us? Does it require an explanation? Look at yourself and look at me. I walk on two feet; you walk on four. However high you lift your head, it remains close to the ground. You wag a tail; I have none, because I am more exalted. I am human, formed from noble clay, descended from Adam, the father of humankind. No one knows your origin or how God created you. The scriptures say nothing about it, while they tell how I was fashioned from pure, clinging clay and given a breath from the divine. Perhaps you were made from water, a demon, or something else; the texts do not explain.
"I build up the world with knowledge. I construct homes, schools, and universities. I learn, speak, express myself, explain, teach, and study. I can become a scientist, doctor, teacher, or any number of useful things. You, meanwhile, walk on four legs wagging your tail, eat raw meat or scraps tossed by the roadside, and search for food among flies, filth, and garbage. I dine in luxurious restaurants, sleep on fine beds, and sit on soft sofas. You lie on roads or piles of dirt; at best your home is a shabby hut, a distant cave, or an animal pen. After all that, you ask what separates us? The difference is as clear as the blazing midday sun."
The wolf regarded him with a calm, knowing smile.
The wolf: "Is it fair, merciful, or even logical that the God to whom you owe such gratitude should leave you wandering in ignorance after all your knowledge, analysis, studies, and research? Why should you know so little about the other creatures—the animals like me who share your world? Is it reasonable that your God never explained how I and other animals came to be? Why does this question remain unresolved among your books and legal opinions?
"And is it merciful to create creatures like me only to let us meet our ends as strays in the streets, scavenging one another or begging for scraps from garbage? Is it mercy for an animal to live every day, every minute, beneath a butcher's knife wielded by the very human who claims to be superior? Have you never wondered why your merciful God did not simply create trees that bear meat, or some equivalent nourishment, so that you could eat without slaughtering us? Is He incapable of doing so, or is it too difficult for Him?
"You claim to be educated, literate, and capable of reason. Yet why does your supposed God allow animal blood to be spilled and the earth to be flooded with the remains of creatures you slaughter every day? Why permit their carcasses to rot, their remains to attract flies, and their stench to spread? Have you ever considered why living things feed on one another, as though nature were a cycle in which all consume something else? Humans feed on animals, animals prey on other animals, and some live on plants. Snakes and birds devise tricks to trap other birds. Do you eat because you must, or starve. Where is your God when you kill stray dogs or hunt bears for their fur? Did He create these creatures to suffer? Could He not have given them protection from life's cruelty?
"Nor has He even protected you, the human being you claim He honored. Where is He when children with cancer die in hospitals? How can a supposedly benevolent God allow children to die in wars and famines, or people to be killed unjustly by stray bullets or quarrels in which they had no part? Where is He when a woman is raped by vile men of your own species while He sits in the heights of heaven and watches in silence? Is He powerless, or so cruel? What of car crashes, train disasters, and serial killers who dismember innocent people merely to satisfy hatred and revenge?
"You call yourselves the noblest species, yet you kill out of spite and hatred, take bribes, and humiliate yourselves for money. Some of you murder and dismember another human being, stuffing the pieces into bags for greed, theft, or a base desire. Your God has not guaranteed care even for the humans He supposedly chose and favored above all worlds, much less animals and plants. What kind of God is that? And on what grounds do you boast of your species when its behavior exposes such shame?
"Do animals kill for revenge? Do they bear human grudges, envy one another, or chase money? We need no money or clothes to cover our nakedness—or, more accurately, to hide our scandals. We have no shameful secrets to conceal. We are not mere papers and documents held by the state, without which we supposedly do not exist. Is this what divine honor means for you: becoming a sheet of paper, a bundle of documents? What a strange honor! I and the other animals do not need such things to establish our existence. You study us in schools and universities, know our species and habitats, and classify us without identity cards or proof of registration. If being reduced to paper is honor, then congratulations to us animals for not being human."
The human, visibly tense and faltering, replied that he had never asked these questions. His holy book—whether the Qur'an, Gospel, or Torah—explained what mattered to him. Why waste time thinking about the nonsense of an animal that could not understand such matters? He trusted that God was wise and knowledgeable, with a reason for every event. God had commanded submission and obedience, and human beings existed to worship Him, while humans were appointed to cultivate the earth and remind others of divine greatness.
The wolf laughed sarcastically.
The wolf: "Does your trust in this supposed God turn you into a creature led like livestock? You surrender to His words as an animal surrenders its neck to the butcher's sharp knife, or as a flock follows a shepherd without question. Is that trust? What a miserable trust, one that diminishes your ability to think and understand, erases your dignity, and turns you into a meek slave who lives only to bow, kneel, and plead before an invisible being you have never seen or heard. Is it truly trust, or a legacy of ignorance and myths?
"Do you deny that you inherited your religion from your family? Every human child is born into a religion that contradicts and competes with others. Each inherits its beliefs and submits to its texts without discussion. Each group claims to be right and calls the others misguided. You run a religious marathon, panting after a mirage—a deception passed down by priests, clerics, and contemptible allies of political power. They played with your minds and promised another life after death so you would not demand the real life you have now, the only one you are certain to experience.
"Look me in the eyes and answer: is that honor and trust, or humiliation, submission, delusion, and falsehood? While others have moved forward, your societies remain trapped in illusion. I see nothing in you that proves you are superior to me. Perhaps I am nobler: I do not hate, murder, steal, or rape. I am not a piece of paper. At least no false god has deceived me, and no cleric has persuaded me that I am better than other beings for his own profit or that of those in power.
"I am the wolf whose nobility and loyalty you yourselves celebrate, using my name to praise courage or independence. When you describe intelligence, you call someone a wolf or a fox; when you describe stupidity, you invoke the poor donkey that carries your burdens without thanks while you beat it to make it go faster. When you praise a strong, distinctive will, you tell someone to be an eagle and not move like the herd. If you are so superior, why do you constantly compare one another to us? We need no identity papers, money, speech, education certificates, or official records for our presence to matter. Yet you still imagine that you are infinitely important simply because a priest has played with your weak mind.
"You are a creature among creatures, like animal and plant, part of nature's cycle. Biologically, you die, rot, and become a corpse returning to the earth. You have damaged this planet more than any other creature: you burn forests, cut trees, kill animals, and spill blood. Your harm far exceeds your benefit. And you do not even understand how you came to be. You imagine you were molded from clay and given a father named Adam. What a fantastic tale! Even a child might doubt it, and a skilled novelist would struggle to make the plot convincing. You do not know how I came to exist, either. You are ignorant, gullible, and naïve, your mind burdened by mountains of inherited religious myths. You have become a foolish creature who believes in illusion, moved by a stick and tempted by a carrot that does not exist, living on false promises and imaginary bliss, with eternal torment in a sick imagination."
The human, furious and stunned as though struck by an electric shock, stammered: "What are you saying? Do you deny that I was created from clay and that Adam was my father? If you boast that your existence needs no papers or education, can you tell me where I came from if I was not formed from clay and Adam never existed? And if you mock me because I do not know how you, an animal, were created, can you tell me how you and I came into existence? If you claim to be truthful, answer me."
Theological Debate: The Absurdity of an Absent God
The human (hesitantly): "My faith says a Creator gave us minds with which to judge and set boundaries for you."
The wolf (with cutting logic): "Let me explain through the logic of the pig and the donkey. If there were a perfect and just God, why create a creature only to humiliate and despise it without cause? Why call the donkey's voice the ugliest of sounds? Why demean the pig and forbid its flesh? Such conduct would not resemble a perfect God, but a petty narcissist who needs to humiliate His creatures to sustain His own supposed pride. The existence of an innocent pig, condemned and insulted through no fault of its own, is a severe challenge to the idea of a just God—or suggests that your creator is no more than a malicious liar. Do I hate these creatures? No. I see them as victims of you and of your illusions.
"And here is the surprise you did not expect from someone you call an animal: your supposed creation from clay and your imaginary father Adam are myths, inherited from religious stories. I have not lived inside those illusions; no one has deceived me with them. You and I, like all living beings, evolved from shared ancestors. Do not make the foolish claim that this means your origin or mine was a modern monkey. That is a mistake in your own description. Our ancestors shared genes; branches separated and evolved into different animal lineages and into the human lineage. Those ancestors had a mixture of features: a tail, a bent back, and arms hanging forward, like the four-legged creatures you insulted a moment ago. Over time, natural processes shaped bodies to live in different environments and move upright where that was advantageous. Look at the curve at the base of your spine, where a tail once extended—the very tail you used to mock me. Look at the similarities between humans and other animals in appearance and behavior. Did all these similarities come from nothing, or are they evidence of evolution in living things, including human beings, physically, mentally, and socially? Early Homo sapiens and earlier humans shared features with other primates, including chimpanzees, because of common ancestry—not because humans are descended from modern chimpanzees. A chimpanzee is one branch; humans are another. You even fail to use accurate words because religion has clouded your understanding.
"All living beings, you and I included, change and adapt to their environments over generations through natural selection. Nature is sparing, choosing what fits; useful inherited differences can accumulate and improve a lineage's chances of survival. These changes happen slowly across generations and can, over time, give rise to new species. You have made this unfortunate planet miserable through brutality, recklessness, and unjustified arrogance.
"But the larger question remains: if a god exists, can you explain why he left you ignorant of where the animals sharing your planet came from? Why do your books not clearly tell you what animals are or how their lineages began? You live beside animals, sometimes raise them in your own homes, boast of your education, and call yourselves the most advanced beings on Earth, yet you cannot answer a simple question about their origins. Why do they have no father like your supposed Adam? Did God lack the ability to explain it, or was He unable? Is He responsible only for fashioning clay, pottery, and stone? Did He avoid the subject because it was embarrassing, or simply leave it without an answer?"
Sweat gathered on the human's face. His words tangled on his lips.
The human: "I…I do not know how to answer. All I know is that God has wisdom in everything. He determined the limits of our minds and spared us the burden of questioning. He has His own order as God, and we are His servants. Not every act needs to be explained to us. It is enough to know that He is all-knowing and wise. Why should I exhaust myself searching into His creation? He knows His creatures and His actions better than I do."
The wolf (with bitter irony): "Exactly. That is what your supposed God—created in the image fashioned for you by priests, rulers, and religious authorities—would want: for you to become blind, hearing only the echo of your imagined master, unable to speak except in praise and certainty about a wisdom you cannot demonstrate. This god has killed your thought while leaving you alive. He has crippled your awareness and understanding, surrounding them with an impenetrable fence against analysis, comprehension, and doubt. He has made you a captive, a humiliated servant of an illusion and a myth. Rust has accumulated on your mind. Your imaginary god has killed thought and turned you into a human machine awaiting commands. And the tragedy is that this master may not exist at all; he is a crude fictional plot that neither a child nor an adult should have to accept without question.
"If you offered us animals or plants a choice, none of us would choose to descend into the delusion that imprisons you. We would rather remain animals or plants than become a member of this hateful, violent, criminal, arrogant, and deceived species that calls itself the highest of all. You are the lowest in cruelty and wrongdoing."
The wolf paused, then returned to the central question of suffering. If an omnipotent, merciful being governed the world, why did predators have to kill to live? Why did creatures suffer from hunger, illness, and violence? Why were humans abandoned to disease, war, accidents, rape, murder, and disasters? The wolf's argument was not that animals were innocent of every act of violence, but that the human claim to unique moral superiority and special divine favor was unsupported by the very world the human celebrated as perfectly ordered.
The human tried to retreat into revelation and submission, saying his scripture had given him all the answers he needed and that the divine will was beyond question. The wolf challenged this answer as inherited obedience rather than independent reasoning, arguing that the certainty each religious community claimed for itself was usually acquired by birth and upbringing, not by examining competing claims.
The wolf, in closing: "Look at dolphins and whales, and at the intelligence of trained dogs that serve you with a loyalty you often do not deserve. Many animals show forms of intelligence that surpass yours; given the chance to learn and communicate in human ways, they might outdo you. We do not need a religious illusion to prevent us from slaughtering one another, because our nature is nobler than your arrogance. You are not the most exalted. You are among the most destructive, absurd, and conceited beings in existence, deceived about both your origins and your morals."
The human (lowering his head as the scale of his error dawned on him): "I never imagined that an animal's arguments could be more logical and honest than everything I studied and was told. Now, wolf, I see in your eyes a nobility, intelligence, and dignity that surpass those of many humans. Your gaze burns away their pride, leaving only crumbling wreckage scattered by the wind."
The human withdrew with his head bowed in shame, defeated by arguments grounded in science and ethics, and forced to confront the possibility that the animal was nobler than he had ever admitted.
End of reflection
BIRTH CERTIFICATE
Name of the newborn: A creative writer and author
Nationality: Living being
Place of birth: The unhappy planet Earth, threatened with extinction and ravaged by a savage creature called humankind
Date of birth: The day of liberation from social constraints, inherited illusions, and religious and communal beliefs; the day of freedom
Month: Breaking free of chains and rigid molds
Year: Revolt against the superstitions of religion and society
Religion: No religion. No gods. No myths or legends of any kind
Father: Principle
Mother: Freedom
Family: Scientific, literary, artistic, and cultural creativity
National identity number: Every number marking a goal reached, an aim achieved, or another step taken toward greatness and success
The traditional birth certificate burst into mocking laughter.
Traditional Birth Certificate: "What nonsense are you writing on yourself, you foolish sheet? You are not a birth certificate; you are ignorant and delirious. No one will ever read these words, and no one will recognize them. You will remain unknown forever."
Free Birth Certificate: "And who are these fools whose recognition you think I need? Do you mean the clerks who move like mindless machines, unable to breathe or think, or like biological statues that happen to speak? They mean nothing to me. It would be no honor to be recognized by them—or by anyone else. It is enough that I have discovered my true self, explored my depths, and defined my own being. What do I have to do with conventional fools like you? Tell me: what are you so proud of, and on what grounds do you accuse me of stupidity and naïveté?"
Traditional Birth Certificate (with arrogance and confidence): "I am an official document, recognized and certified by the state and the civil registry. My details are the details all human beings need; they rely on me to conduct their affairs. Without me, the universe would come to a standstill. Is that not reason enough to boast?"
The free certificate looked at it with scorn. "The nonsense written across your face is useless to me. No state or government recognizes my words, and no official business depends on them. Only you need to place yourself before your eyes and admire yourself, while I fill your heart and soul with freedom. Nobody needs you, nobody cares for you, and nobody seeks you except when they must. You serve no one's life; no one actually wants you."
Free Birth Certificate: "Enough of your ignorance and folly. You are not worth a clipping from a fingernail. What do you boast of? What achievement gives you honor? You own nothing of what is written on you, and you deserve no credit for what these imprisoned, humiliated people require. They need you only because they are confined within life's chains and lie behind its bars. They do not use you out of love, but out of necessity, and their hearts are filled with resentment toward the stale routine that clings to your hollow words.
"Your details are merely biological facts. Those whose names, fathers, and mothers are written on you did not choose them. They did not choose their country or a religion full of myths and delusions. They did not choose their parents, birthplace, or date of birth. I am certain that, if you asked them—and if they could act freely—many would tear you into shreds. They did not choose the things written across your face. You have drowned them in the curse of an existence they did not request, perhaps did not want, and whose terms were imposed before they could speak. They endure you reluctantly and resentfully. That alone should make you bow your head in shame. What have you offered them except inherited conditions, unfulfilled wishes, unwanted countries, and families they might have wished to leave? You imposed all this upon them through temporary biological chance. It ends with another yellow certificate announcing the decay of their bodies and their return to nothingness.
"You have offered them humiliation and bitterness. Even the happy ones have never felt indebted to you. You deprived them of the freedom to choose their own identities and imposed a temporary existence they never asked for."
Traditional Birth Certificate (dismissively): "And what have you given them, after that grand speech hurled at me like a shell?"
Free Birth Certificate (with pride and confidence): "I have given them everything that exists: freedom. I have offered them another life above their biological one. I have given their memory a form of immortality, transforming them from temporary organisms with limited agency and choice into beings able to choose a true identity—the one they select for themselves, not the one imposed on them.
"I have given them an enduring life. They can remain present even after death because they have chosen their own names, names that express their selves; they have chosen the place where they created and contributed, rather than the place where they happened to be born. They have chosen their own birthday: the day their freedom was born, the day they defended their ideas and left their true imprint on Earth, the day their voices reached others through ideas, books, scientific discoveries, literature, and thought that changed the world. That is the birth certificate they made for themselves, one that grants an enduring life, freedom, and a self they can be proud of.
"I am a profound cry reverberating across the universe, a bright and powerful imprint that commands admiration and respect. You, by contrast, are only a sheet that time folds away and everyone forgets, turning yellow as soon as the brief need for you has passed. They were forced to need you, and only temporarily. Their need for me gives them the immortality they chose and pursued, through which they found their selves and achieved their goals."
The traditional birth certificate folded in on itself, bowed its head in shame, and withdrew, dragging the tails of defeat and regret behind it. It lay in a desk drawer in some government office. The free birth certificate remained upright like an eagle, its wings pouring brilliant light over the universe—the light of knowledge and civilization. People stood transfixed by its beauty and power, watching from afar, dreaming of it, and turning their eyes toward it in the hope of finding a new birth and refuge: the true identity they had long been searching for.
End of reflection
TWO WINGS
I heard the sound of my own cries for help as I lay inside a dark, foul-smelling, bottomless pit, wrapped in its dense darkness like a filthy black cloak. The stench seemed to seep from every fold: oppression, servitude, exploitation, disgust, and revulsion. What suffocating narrowness! What anguish I endured! Night had fallen, and the shadows of cursed shackles closed around me. I was alone, exhausted and burdened with chains that drained my strength, broke me apart, and demolished me from within. I no longer felt like anything but a wandering ghost, a colorless, meaningless thing—as though I were nothingness within nothingness, sinking into a sea of extinction and a mirage of humiliation. Each day and night, a heavy, hateful, faded shadow settled over me, like a foul black stone, stinking and weighty, stubbornly pressing down on my breath until it nearly extinguished it. Still I called for help from deep within that cursed pit, hoping someone might come and throw me a rope, or even a thread of hope, a ray of light to illuminate the darkness of my extinguished soul.
After many thoughts and desperate cries, she came to me. She hurried to my rescue and listened to my plea. She did not hesitate or falter; she rushed forward, reaching out both hands to pull me from the foul abyss and the sinister darkness that had almost destroyed me. She quickly lowered a rope and pulled with force, determination, and stubborn resolve until she lifted me from the depths of the hell in which I had been trapped. With every movement upward, with every inch of the rope, I recovered my breath in a single rush. Life returned to me; its fragrance flowed through my body, and I inhaled the intoxicating, sweet breezes that gradually wrapped around me.
Panting, I told her, "My dearest, you are the only one who came to save me. No one else rescued me but you. You flow through my blood. I love you, my dearest, with a love that a thousand books and references could not adequately praise or repay. You are the sun that illuminates the universe, the true sun; everything other than you is impenetrable darkness."
She laughed with delight, smiling broadly, and answered with confidence and assurance.
"I love you too, my dear. I never hesitate to answer your call or help you, whatever effort it costs me. I love those who love me and value those who value me. I belong only to the one who welcomes my breezes within them, the one worthy of me, the one prepared to lose everything precious in life for my sake. When such a person calls, I will never be late. I will come at once."
Then she spread her two broad, enormous wings. With confidence and joy, she turned toward me, carried me upon them, and flew far away, soaring through the sky.
"Come," she said, "you and I will go to the Land of Dreams. It is the most suitable place for us. We can live there together in an eternal life, undisturbed by anyone."
I asked, "What is the Land of Dreams? I have never heard of it before."
"It is my place and yours, our own land. Perhaps we were brought into this life only to find it. It is a land spacious enough for us and for the plants, birds, and animals. They are your loved ones, and you have always spoken to me about them."
"Yes, I love them deeply. Do you know why?"
"Why?"
"Because I see you embodied in them. You live vividly in their lives. I see you clearly in every step these creatures take; your generous shade covers their existence. Even if you are not absolute or perfect, what you have given them is enough. They receive your breezes in a sufficient measure, and that is why I love them. In truth, I love you, because wherever they live, wherever they go, I find myself looking for you."
She sighed, and a dense cloud of sorrow crossed her face.
"I could not—or rather, I cannot and will not—shade the lives of those others: those wretched beings weighed down by chains of humiliation and slavery. Those fools who boast of their own servitude, who take pride in being lowly slaves, bent beneath harsh laws that restrict their movements and nearly count their breaths. Their souls are filled with malice, evil, spite, and hatred. I came to despise them and recoil from their stupidity and resentment. I never wanted to be part of their lives, because they do not deserve me and are not worthy of me. Their humiliating, submissive lives force them every day and night to bow their heads to the ground before illusion and mirage. These fools even boast of their own foolishness and degradation. They surrender willingly, surrounded by expensive walls and shackles made of fear, humiliation, oppression, and cruelty. So I turned away from them and fled, as a healthy person flees from the plague."
I sighed too, releasing a long breath hot with sorrow and weariness, and replied, "I am exactly like you. I too have grown to hate them, retreat from them, and keep my distance, as though I did not belong to their species. The only things that connect me to them are outward appearance and the base instincts that control both them and me. But in truth, I am not one of them. I have always felt foreign among them.
"They are what they are because they are human: a hateful species, among the basest living things, the least free and most enslaved. Human beings are full of malice and greed. Temptation shades them; deception, fraud, and evasion protect them. Their ugly ambitions emerge in the form of rancor, and their evil drips from them. They are nothing but paper. Without paper, they are nothing. Each individual is a sheet bearing a name, a sex, a date of birth, and a home address, plus another sheet for work, identity, or an official card. They need names to introduce themselves to one another, money, and countless other things. They are nothing more than a collection of documents, and these papers are what summarize and certify their existence."
I spoke with distaste, breathing out a hot sigh that met her sorrowful face.
"How wretched they are, how miserable their condition! They are shackled with chains and fetters made of paper, and without those chains they have no recognized existence. What a wretched and foolish existence—a life that scarcely exists at all! Nothingness and extinction are more dignified, more complete, more unified, and freer than this. What a pitiful, contemptible existence. Worst of all, they boast of their humiliation. They take pride in being slaves: slaves to earning their daily bread, slaves to paper restraints, slaves who bow beneath burdens too heavy to bear. They are slaves to evil that takes hold inside them, dripping its poison into their souls until they become killers, criminals, thieves, bribe-takers, forgers, fraudsters, and liars. Or they become slaves to an imaginary being whose existence they merely presume, pleading with it out of fear, hoping for its approval and reward, terrified of its punishment.
"They have accepted humiliation, even celebrated it. They have sanctified it in the form of sacred illusions. They love their degradation and boast of it to the point of disgrace. How could you, so complete and elevated, so proud and dignified, consent to exist among these ruffians? How could I embody myself in a species that calls itself the highest, the most favored, the noblest—when the reality is so far from that claim? Sadly, they submit to liars and frauds who hide behind an imaginary veil of virtue and pretend to possess the truth, though they are nowhere near it. The gulf between truth and perfection, on the one hand, and the fictions they claim on the other, is immense. Yet people praise and applaud those impostors, celebrate them, and take pride in them! How foolish and wretched this species is. It is moved only by a stick: fear drives it, a whip guides it, and a carrot tempts it forward as it hurries in obedience, afraid of punishment and greedy for a reward."
I looked around. In the Land of Dreams, I saw only animals and birds, spreading their wings and devouring the breadth of the sky. I saw trees and plants, and breathed in their fragrance until my smile widened and filled my cheeks. I answered her:
"This blessed land is inhabited only by these beautiful creatures. They need no papers to prove their existence. They are known without documents, and their value is greater than paper shackles. They do not kill, steal, hate, or commit crimes. If one of them hunts or kills, it is to obtain food, not out of hatred, revenge, or malice. They are not sent to prisons or tortured in detention centers. They are not bound by papers that make them nobodies when those papers are absent. They roam as they please. No curfew is imposed upon them. They come and go without a watcher or judge, yet each is answerable to itself and bears responsibility for its own actions. They are not forever treated as suspects or accused of something. They are far greater than that.
"Look at the birds in the sky, flying above with transparency and purity. Then look down at the bottom, at humankind walking on two feet. Shackles and restrictions surround them and everything they touch. They are imprisoned in their clothes, their bodies, their greed, their hatred, their resentment—and in the whole system of their lives. Birds soar in the open air above them; and where above is above, below is below, because the lower place is the one that suits human beings.
"Animals and plants do not need clothes. Without them, they are not naked; when they remove them, they are not immoral. They are not guilty, perverse, or debauched for failing to wear garments. They do not need special specifications for clothes, because they do not need them at all—not because they are inferior, but the opposite: because they are freer, less constrained, and more elevated. They have risen beyond the need to dress. Without clothes, they are whole and complete, lacking nothing. This corrupt species, by contrast, is called incomplete, indecent, shameless, mad, or perverted without its garments. Clothes are not merely another paper; they are also a piece of fabric that conceals them. They hide their sins, their lowliness, and as much of their evil as possible. They are yet another chain added to their many chains.
"So where are they in relation to me, and where am I in relation to them? What evidence gives them the right to claim a higher place? They are bound creatures. No matter how much they build, cultivate, or construct, I see them as lower and less worthy. Yet they persist in their foolishness with conceit and empty arrogance, like a hollow drum that produces nothing but a harsh, irritating noise while imagining itself the highest, most advanced, most important being in existence."
She looked at me with confidence and asked, "Tell me: which is happier, freer, and more elevated—the wonderful creatures here in the Land of Dreams, or that cursed species in the Land of Nightmares and Catastrophes?"
I smiled with an inward sense of calm and peace. "You ask me, yet the answer is in your eyes and dripping from your lips."
She carried me upon her great wings and flew with me over the broad, open spaces of the Land of Dreams. "You are the only one I chose and preferred from among that hateful species, the only one I selected to remain with me always." She continued to glide through the vastness, patting me with her wing and rocking me gently, like a child sleeping peacefully in the arms of a tender mother.
She was the freedom I had chosen and preferred—and each of us was the right choice for the other.
End of reflection
VANISHING
Lately, he had taken to turning away and showing her his back. She knelt before him, pleading, reminding him of all their past happiness, victories, and joys. Her voice broke into sobs, and tears fell to her lips.
She: "What has happened to you? What has come over you? You were never this cruel, and now you insist once again on disappointing me, turning your back with such harshness. Tell me what I have done to you. What wrong have I committed? Do not leave me like a feather tossed about in the wind, battered and played with by the storms inside my head. I am nearly going mad. I cannot understand why you have become like this, why you keep letting me down, again and again."
He still faced away from her. He sighed, and his words came fractured with sorrow.
He: "It is over. My companions, my equals, and I have decided to leave you and withdraw for good. You can find happiness somewhere away from me—and from them. There are many paths to happiness."
She: "But you are the only one responsible for my happiness. How can I find another way without you? You and your companions are the central axis around which life revolves. Life is a collection of days; days are made of hours, hours of minutes, and before them, seconds. Where am I to find happiness if you and your companions abandon me? You form a team called the week; weeks turn into months, months into a year, and years into years upon years. At their root, all of them are made of you. Before my eyes, you shape my life—a collection of days, months, and years. How can I find happiness away from you? Tell me, where should I travel in this difficult road, darkened by nights that seem to stretch on forever, when life itself, if only you knew, is short?"
He answered stubbornly, with a sharp edge to his voice.
He: "You can find happiness in something else: a hobby you love, music you listen to, or even a practice of meditation."
She sobbed, pain tearing at her wounded spirit.
She: "I have tried. I have tried desperately to keep sadness away. I have tried to find happiness without you, to ignore you, forget you, even remove you from my calculations, as if you had never existed. But all my attempts have been in vain. Do you know why? Because you refused. With stubborn determination, you denied me every other door to happiness and threw me, against my will, onto the stage of life to act this ridiculous play with you at every moment—as though you took pleasure in tormenting me.
"How can I find happiness elsewhere if you refuse to allow it? How can you ask me to do so when you have no intention of letting me? You know perfectly well that if you are cruel to me and take happiness away, nothing else can give it back. Why do you evade me and persist in deceiving me? Why do you pretend to be innocent, wearing the fleece of a gentle lamb while a savage beast hides inside you, tearing at my soul, identity, and feelings with its claws until they are ripped to shreds without mercy?
"She moved closer and gently stroked the back he still turned toward her, feeling it with her weak fingertips, pleading: "What has happened to you? You were not like this. Why have you changed? You were never so cruel. I used to stir your pity, and even when you were harsh, you would turn toward me tenderly, caress my hair with your gentle whispers, pour happiness into my tormented soul, and let me drink from cups of joy until I imagined I would be quenched forever, the happiest creature in existence. Especially when I was a child. Do you remember?"
He continued to turn his back. With a long, painful sigh, he replied:
He: "Does an illusion do any good? You were the one who was mistaken, not me. You should never have believed in the illusion of happiness. The thread of illusion is short—shorter than the thread of a lie, and more treacherous, deceptive, and quick to disappear."
She: "Ah! What other choice did I have but to believe? You gave me no choice and no freedom. You stubbornly shut every door in my face. I tried so hard to open them, hoping to find my lost happiness and the passion that died between the teeth and claws of your cruelty.
"You have turned life into a game that you insist I must always lose. You forced me onto this hateful, absurd stage of life—with all its filth, ugliness, arrogance, opinions, and cruelty—without a reason or even a single explanation. All you gave me was a free ticket to a journey filled with pain, suffering, fear, disappointment, betrayal, anxiety, conflict, and strained relationships, even with those closest to me. And you did all this with such cruelty and stubbornness, then expected me to thank you for the abundant suffering you gave me for free, without my ever asking for it!
"You even demand that I struggle against waves of emotional pain, savage feelings, negative thoughts, and anxiety that gnaws at me like a merciless giant. How can I fight this torrent, this foul flood that forces me to fall into a deep abyss where anger, tension, fear, anxiety, distress, and boredom pile up, tossing me back and forth like a ball in the hands of competing waves?
"Death has been lying in wait for me from the very first moment of my birth. I was born into your hands, into this existence and this life, and you seized me at once and threw me onto life's stage. You promised me happiness, but I saw nothing of it except a passing illusion that vanished moments later, like perfume whose trace evaporates before the certainty of nothingness and extinction."
He continued along his path, moving farther away without turning to acknowledge her complaint, as though he had not heard a word. He walked until he reached the great door and slammed it shut behind him with such force and cruelty that it boomed like an explosion.
She rushed after him, running and calling out, begging him to show mercy. She tried to open the locked door or break its sealed bolts, which had been secured by that thunderous slam. She kept screaming, crying for help, pounding at the door with both hands until she fell unconscious to the ground.
This time, she never woke again.
End of reflection