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The people - many camped out at the hospital to pray for the return of His Majesty's good health - first gasped in disbelief at the sight of the King, then the emotional dam broke. All the repressed and suppressed worry, anxious trepidation, profound love, admiration and respect, and immense relief was released in a tsunami of emotion, weeping and sobbing - uncontrollable, bewildered, indescribable, numinous, and heartfelt.

It had been 31 days that he had been hospitalised, but to many of us it felt like eternity.

His Majesty sat alone. The people we saw wheeling him out in an electric wheelchair were his physicians. Their faces showed unadulterated love and reverence. It was heart-warming as well as heartrending. Suddenly, all background noises faded into cavernous silence. At that moment, one was left alone with His Majesty, and his pain. Silence tells its own story.

After more than 60 years of honest and untiring work and effort to better the lives of his people in a sustainable and dignified manner, and for the good stead of the nation, we have returned His Majesty's compassion and his magnanimity with absolute cruelty and betrayal. He has been called the nation's symbol of unity, and its soul. He has ruled not so much by word, but by deeds. If one is to examine carefully his lifelong work, one will find that he has always kept, in full, the promise he gave to the country and the people on May 5, 1950 - the day of his coronation. He promised that he would reign with righteousness, for the benefit and happiness of the Thai people. Nothing more, nothing less.

It is us who have let him down, over and over - and frighteningly and increasingly without shame. Not only that: many of us did not learn from the good examples he purposely set out for us. Indeed, many viciously exploited them, abused them, and selfishly twisted them into something unrecognisable and horrid.

 A broken heart can be healed, but how can one retrieve a lost soul?

Why haven't we learned that it's hard work and not handouts that will carry us through tough times and sustain us during dark as well as good times?

Why haven't we got the wisdom to heed His Majesty's tangible and intangible messages?

Why have we come to think only of our entitlement, even unearned, but not our responsibility and duty to make our country at peace with itself, not a house divided?

Why have we created so much hatred when we were given so much love and affection by His Majesty?

Why have we willingly thrown caution to the wind to believe in glitter promised by some people as gold, and allowed cheap rhetoric to acquire credible weight?

Why do we allow the exploitation and abuse of His Majesty's good name to go unabated?

What's wrong with us? When was it that "gratitude" and "conscience" disappeared from our lexicon?

I am quite certain that the many bloggers who call me names every time I touch on this subject will have their answers, for me and I will get more nasty messages. All I will say is that those people who seek to extirpate every fabric of our society have not done a thing of real value tofor Thailand, not an infinitesimal fraction of what His Majesty has done for us. The most tragic thing is that their lies, that have been repeated so many times in so many different ways with different tacts and timing, have taken on a life of their own. Their big words, refrained for the nth time, become their "authentic", "coveted" good deeds that in reality never really existed.

The unsuspicious belief that does away with undismayed and unintimidated inquiry that affords those lies and deceptions has given those people a hero status, so unwarranted and completely undeserving.

And they assume and embrace such status gladly, knowing full well that it will be at the expense of the nation. The fact that they will go to such lengths to get themselves vindicated and exonerated, and to profit, should be indicative of the kind of beings they are and their true colours.

And all this time, we have never heard, and will never hear, a spiteful word from His Majesty against those people. Vengefulness is not part of his constitution. Was Martin Luther King wrong in saying that the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice?

There is now no unity in the country to speak of. While it is true that we normally are used to fighting among ourselves, this has gone beyond our natural squabbling disposition. The divide and the unyielding desire to win at any price has become a sick joke at the expense of ourselves, and it has battered down our soul. And without our soul, we only subsist in a pathetic, hollow existence, drifting away with no direction, losing our way.

It is in this silent moment that we may understand His Majesty's pain. And maybe in this moment we can realise that we exist without living.