Forward by Fayra Teeters: I first met Hanafi in Seattle when we were both kicking around as Real Estate Agents and I was always impressed by his fortuitous insights into everything liberally laced with a healthy dose of humor. It’s no surprise to me that now that he’s retired, he’s turned his cultural focus towards becoming an online blogging humorist. Here is his first venture into that arena:

The Modern Life of Louis Shapiro (or, How the Buddha Showed Up with a Brooklyn Accent)
with thanks to Bob Dylan, Google Maps, an expired Costco membership, and another failed game of Candy Crush
by Hanafi Libman

There was this guy, Louis Shapiro. Nice enough guy. A little neurotic, a little too into oat milk, but sincere—achingly sincere in that way only someone in their late 30s, who’s read too many self-help books, and just discovered Alan Watts can be. His parents called him “Louis,” like “Lewis,” but he always kind of wanted it to be “Lou-ee,” like one of the guys in the ‘hood, or French nobility, or some kind of artsy street magician. Didn’t matter. No one got it right.

Anyway, Louis had a feeling. You know, one of those feelings, an “INKLING”… Like Bob Dylan said, “Something is happening here, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?” Except Louis wasn’t Mr. Jones. He was Louie. And he had Google.
He tried everything.
Ayahuasca in Topanga Canyon: Nothing but vomiting and a guy named Raven playing the didgeridoo.
Vegan silent retreat in Vermont: All he got was constipated.
Scientology in Beverly Hills, but they wanted him to get famous first.
He downloaded every meditation app. Listened to every podcast. Pondered every YouTube revelation. Bought mala beads from an Etsy store run by a woman named Darlene in Ohio.

Then he got into stoicism until it made him too depressed.
He tried Ultimate Positivity until he wanted to punch someone.
He went paleo, then keto, then raw, then breatharian for a weekend and passed out at a farmer’s market.
Still… nothing.
He let his hair and nails grow. His beard got wild. He stopped wearing shoes. He started to wonder if squirrels were trying to tell him something.
He sat in the desert for three days, waiting for a sign, and got a sunburn that resembled the Virgin Mary, but no one else could see it.
Eventually, Louis was just tired. Cosmically tired.
Existentially gassed.
Worn out in a way that even Netflix could not fix.

So one day, he wandered into a park—not like a cool national park, just some scruffy city park, with a bench, and a tree, and a guy named Marco doing tai chi badly.
Louis collapsed under a tree. The tree wasn’t sacred. It wasn’t even symmetrical. It had gum stuck to it, and smelled faintly of dog pee. But it was there. And Louis was done.
He sat.
Not like “I’m meditating” sat. More like “I give up” sat.

Like, “Fine, life. You win.
I don’t know what the hell is going on. I never did. I probably never will. I’m just gonna sit here and wait for the squirrels to eat me.” And he Surrendered to that Great Cosmic Question.
And in that moment—bam—clarity.
Not the kind with angel choirs or purple lights or that voice that sounds like James Earl Jones, or Joan Baez. No. It was more like… quiet.
And in the quiet, something unfolded. Something like:
“Dude. Stop trying. That’s literally the whole thing. Just. Stop. Trying.”

See, Louis hadn’t figured it out.
HE’D been figured out.

Some people call it surrender. Capital-S Surrender. Some people call it grace, Nirvana, Or mercy. Or alignment. Or dharma. Or downloading the latest firmware update for your soul.
Louis called it:
“The Great Cosmic ‘Oh.’”

He realized we don’t get to know how it works by thinking. The Cosmos doesn’t take orders; it isn’t a Rubik’s Cube. It’s not waiting for your TED Talk.
The Big Answer isn’t an answer at all—it’s a letting go.
And then suddenly, weirdly… it all made sense.
He laughed. A Real Laugh. Not the kind you post on Instagram with a sunrise filter, but the belly laugh of someone who just realized the joke is on all of us, and it’s Fine. And it came from somewhere new, inside, that he’d never felt before.

He didn’t become a guru. He didn’t write a book. He didn’t start a YouTube channel.
He just walked home. Stopped at the corner bodega. Got a bagel.
Extra schmear.
And that’s how enlightenment came to Louis Shapiro in the year 2025:
Not through conquest.
Not through seeking.
But by giving up under a questionable tree…
…and getting out of the damn way.

The End.
(Or, more accurately: The Beginning.)