My time in the military wasn't physically hard. But during that time, it felt like my time had stopped. Once roll call ended and I went back to the barracks, the day was over. I already knew that tomorrow I would wake up at the same time, walk the same hallway with the same people, and repeat the same routine. Every time I saw my friends' graduation posts on my phone, it felt like time was passing for everyone but me — like I was stuck living the same day over and over. Caught in this repeating routine, I slowly lost my sense of direction, and every moment started to feel meaningless.

I once watched a video comparing the size of the universe. It started with a person lying in a park, then zoomed out past the Earth. Soon the Earth disappeared from the screen, and even the solar system became just a single dot. By the end, even our galaxy was only one dot among countless others. Even after the video ended, I couldn't turn off my phone for a while. The things I had been holding onto as so important suddenly looked so small. But that doesn't mean it's a reason to give up on anything. I think it just means I should live by valuing this moment, right now.

One day an interesting thought came to me. What if this world is actually fake, and the real me has been in a coma for fifteen or twenty years in the real world? When I wake up, all the experiences, relationships, and achievements from this world would only exist as memories. So could the "real" world still be called real? What if this is actually true? Is there really any guarantee that the world we're living in is the real one? And if all of this is fake, does that mean life right now has no meaning? Before that — does it even matter to draw a line between real and fake? What would that line even be based on? In the end, my personal answer to this question was: the moment. I can recognize my own existence because I feel things. Even if this world is fake, this moment — and the senses, emotions, and existence I have right now — are real.