THE ROAD HOME

I woke at a quarter to five this morning from a delightful dream.

I had been visiting two villages. The first is already becoming a blur, as dreams so often do, but the second remains surprisingly vivid.

I was cycling from one place to another with a small group of boys.

There was something wonderful about being on a bicycle again. For a moment I was a child once more, simply riding along without anywhere particularly important to be. No car. No timetable. No destination that needed to be conquered. Just the road, the boys, and the quiet pleasure of moving.

Then I realized that I was visiting the relatives of a close friend who had passed away.

I saw him only briefly.

He smiled at me—and then he was gone.

The house was a Malay kampung house, the kind where many members of a family might live together under one roof. There was a feeling of life, family and community about the place.

At one point in the dream I was doing some kind of yoga stretching exercise. As I moved, I discovered that there were sewing needles stuck into my trousers, arranged in fine straight lines.

I carefully removed them.

There were more.

I removed those too.

This happened several times until eventually I handed the needles to a young woman and said:

"Your house is clean now."

I woke with a strange sense of spiritual exhilaration.

What made the dream particularly interesting was what happened later.

Evening came, and we got back on our bicycles and cycled happily back to the first house.

There was no difficulty finding the way.

No getting lost.

No anxiety about getting home.

That caught my attention because in many of my dreams, getting home is precisely where the trouble begins.

This time, I simply found my way home.

---

Perhaps the dream came at an interesting moment in my waking life.

Over the past few days, things have changed with my children. One has changed jobs, while another has changed the location of her work. As a consequence, I find myself at home much more than before.

The morning routine has changed.

I no longer have to send one child to work every morning, while the other now has the car to get her own work done.

And suddenly, there I am.

At home.

With time.

More time than I have been accustomed to having.

It is an interesting thing, having time.

One might imagine it would automatically be a blessing. Sometimes it is. At other times it becomes a rather dangerous invitation to boredom, procrastination and endless scrolling.

And so I have been listening to podcasts.

Quite a lot of them.

Lately, many have been about artificial intelligence and what some people describe as the "End of Time," human extinction, or the possibility of something called "Super AI" eventually becoming beyond our ability to control.

I listen.

I think.

I listen some more.

And somewhere along the way, one thought keeps coming back to me:

What a bloody waste.

Humanity has been given such an extraordinary gift.

Perhaps one of the greatest gifts we have ever received.

And yet here we are, potentially turning it into another instrument for greed, hatred, ignorance and the pursuit of power.

It isn't really AI that bothers me most.

It is us.

We have repeatedly demonstrated that our ability to create powerful tools can advance much faster than our wisdom about how to use them.

Fire was a gift.

The wheel was a gift.

Electricity was a gift.

The Internet was a gift.

And now artificial intelligence has arrived.

What will we do with this one?

That question has been haunting me.

And then another question follows:

What can an insignificant old man like me possibly contribute to any of this?

The answer, I am beginning to understand, is probably:

Not very much.

And perhaps that is perfectly alright.

I am not going to solve the future of artificial intelligence from my little corner of the world.

I am not going to predict whether humanity will flourish, destroy itself, or somehow stumble into a future none of us can presently imagine.

What I can do is observe.

I can question.

I can resist jumping to conclusions.

I can try to distinguish between a genuine warning and somebody selling fear for clicks.

I can listen without automatically believing.

I can remain curious without becoming consumed.

Perhaps what I have been searching for is not an answer but balance.

There is a great temptation in these extraordinary times to swing between extremes.

Everything is wonderful.

Everything is terrible.

AI will save humanity.

AI will destroy humanity.

The future is glorious.

The future is doomed.

Perhaps the wiser position is simply:

I don't know.

But I am paying attention.

---

This morning, while I was thinking about all this, the Azan broke gently into the early morning air.

A short shower had just passed.

Perhaps the rain had settled some of the haze outside.

For a moment, everything became very simple.

The sky.

The rain.

The call to prayer.

The quietness of the morning.

And that strange dream about bicycles, children, an old friend, sewing needles and finding my way home.

Maybe there is a connection.

Maybe there isn't.

WallahuAlam.

But I keep thinking about those needles.

They were hidden until I moved.

And when I found them, I didn't panic.

I simply removed them carefully, one by one.

Perhaps that is how we should approach some of the frightening things we encounter in the world today.

Don't swallow everything.

Don't reject everything.

Stretch a little.

Look carefully.

Remove what doesn't belong.

Keep what is useful.

And then continue down the road.

There is no need to know exactly where the road ends.

For now, it is enough to take the next step.

Or, perhaps after this morning's dream:

the next ride.

And when evening comes, may we still know the way home.

WallahuAlam.

#TheRoadHome #AIAndHumanity #FindingBalance #MorningReflections #DreamsAndReality #WallahuAlam