The path has never been clearer to me.

It’s been two and a half years since I moved to a new country and started a new job.

I was excited and joyous, but also tired, sad, and quietly uneasy.

After a decade in my career, I began to see things differently.

Society — human organization itself — is chaotic.

East or West, top or bottom, it’s the same confusion, only dressed differently.

In Chinese there’s a phrase, “草臺班子,” meaning a straw-stage troupe — a group performing before the stage is even built.

That’s how reality often feels to me.

I once thought science was sacred — a pure search for truth, what Karl Popper called conjecture and refutation.

Then I read Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions and realized science is less a path to truth and more a social endeavor — shaped by people, power, habit, and belief.

I used to think probabilities were propensities, that statistics revealed the world’s hidden truths.

Now I see them as closer to beliefs — not material facts, but our way of giving shape to uncertainty.

The same with mathematics.

Why does it work? No one knows.

And physics — even now we can’t agree on what quantum theory truly means.

I once believed meritocracy produced excellence.

Now I see it often breeds hypocrisy, and sometimes quiet authoritarianism.

Those at the bottom are left behind, and it’s no wonder the world feels so polarized.

Still, we live in an extraordinary age.

We can cross the Pacific in a single day.

My words can reach someone I’ll never meet.

And for the first time, humanity has built something that appears truly intelligent —

though we still don’t know why it works.

This is why I read philosophy:

because it begins from nothing,

yet still allows one to believe in something.

I’m not a nihilist, nor really an absurdist,

but I feel the absurdity — deeply!!!

And yet, somehow, things are becoming clearer,

as if something is calling.

I’ve never cared much for money, titles, or fame.

As long as I have food, shelter, and clothing for my family —

and enough time to follow what I love — that’s enough.

At this moment, all the versions of me,

from all the years before and perhaps after,

seem to be converging through memory.

They meet in this moment.

Does the future already exist?

Gradually, gradually,

and then suddenly,

it seems the path becomes clear:

the curiosity of the unknown,

the pursuit of meaning.

The path has never been clearer to me.