Joseph Nguyen, in his book Don’t Believe Everything You Think, draws this line clearly. Thinking, he argues, is the source of our suffering — not the thoughts themselves, but what we do with them. The spiral. The second-guessing. The relentless inner commentary that turns a moment of clarity into a week of anxiety. He echoes a truth that philosophers and mystics have long understood: we cannot solve our problems with the same level of consciousness that created them. Tactics are temporary. An expansion of consciousness is permanent.

I drift back again to the wonderful summers I spent in Lebanon, and then I am suddenly nudged to leave the empty plane. I remember why I’m here – Gibran Khalil Gibran – and I smile.