(do)Lorem Ipsum

"Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..."

I remember the first time I read that passage. I was equal parts confused and intrigued. I read the entire passage over and over again trying to make sense of it.

It wasn’t just text. It felt like something ancient. It hummed with familiarity — the kind of thing your bones know before your brain catches up. I recognized pieces, fragments. Words I didn’t consciously understand yet, but still somehow knew. Even back then, I could tell it wasn’t just random gibberish. There was rhythm to it- a flow, a structure. I knew it had meaning. Real words. A real language.

So I asked my teacher, “What language is it?”

She laughed and told me it was nonsense. Fake. Made-up. Just filler to make pages look full. She hadn't looked closely enough at the handout she gave us and had meant to take it out. She didn’t say it was Latin. She didn’t even say it was based on anything. She acted like I was silly for asking, like I’d imagined something that wasn’t there.

But I knew something was there.

And the moment stuck with me. Not because it was some grand mystery at the time, but because of the ache it left. That small, quiet betrayal. That moment when your intuition rings true and someone tells you to mute it.

Years passed. I learned a little Latin. Enough to know it’s a language of endings, that it plays with structure, that meaning hides in the shape of words rather than their order. And tonight out of nowhere that memory came back. That old itch. That old hum in my chest, an inner knowing despite what seemed to be true. So I pulled up the text again. Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet... And I began to unravel it, word by word.

I fed it through Google Translate. I shuffled words around. Sometimes I’d get one meaning, then a completely different one, depending on how I grouped the words in the sentences. And instead of discouraging me, it felt like a puzzle finally unfolding. Like I’d returned to something I’d left behind — something sacred I had once been told didn’t exist.

And then, I found the truth.

It had been Latin all along, it didn’t just "look like" Latin to me. Not only that, it came from a text written by a man named Cicero. A real philosophical essay about pain and purpose, written over two thousand years ago. The words had been mangled, scrambled, hollowed out to become digital placeholder text- a very fitting metaphor for what mass media production has done to meaningful media. But the soul was still there. The echo. The wisdom I’d felt all those years ago was real, buried beneath the static like a message in a bottle.

And now I can’t stop thinking about it.

How many times in life do we pass by ancient truth disguised as nonsense? How often are we told to ignore the things that stir our gut, simply because no one else sees what we see?

I saw it.

And I remember the feeling.

And this time I trusted it.

Through my pain, I found priceless wisdom.

---------------

My Translation of the "Lorem Ipsum" Text:

It is a sorrowful thing, this pursuit of great knowledge, that it is often offered in ways that bring more pain than peace.

And yet, I endure it at times, as if hardship and suffering are the price of learning something worthwhile.

After all, who among us would willingly labor, if not for the hope of some deeper benefit or meaning gained from it?

Pain, when stripped of purpose, feels like a burden — but in the presence of pleasure, it can be twisted into something sought after. Still, let that false desire flee, for it bears no real fruit.

Except, perhaps, in those blinded by craving — those who abandon their duties, who neglect the work that softens and shapes the soul through honest labor.

----------