It's such a simple, stupid lesson. Life is not about me. It's not that I'm an egomaniac--my brain is an egomaniac. To my brain, my body is just a flabby appendage, an avatar, acting out various amateurish parts on a second-rate stage while the real action is happening up here in this skull-delimited parthenon. How wrong-headed. How upside down. The smarter I think I am, the farther away I am from reality. I'm just a guy walking down a sidewalk, one of four billion such people. How can the psychotic little Kim Jong-il up in here accept that? Or that he himself is just an illusion?