I Wish I Didn’t Know.

Read till the end.
One take.
No edits.
Or so I'd like to believe.

It's been a while.

Not because I had nothing to say, but because nothing wanted to become a sentence. Every time I opened Safari, I'd end up closing it again. Sometimes I'd blame the music. Sometimes the coffee. Most of the time, I'd blame myself.

So this morning I decided to stop looking for a subject.

I'll simply write about what's been happening inside my head.

Before that, though, I have to admit something. I've always been fascinated by dreams. Freud may have been spectacularly wrong about a great many things, but I still admire one of his instincts: the unconscious rarely speaks plainly. It edits. Condenses. Rearranges. It borrows faces, rewrites memories, and leaves you to decipher the mess after you've had your morning coffee.

Three nights ago I dreamt about my sixth-grade teacher.

She was brilliant.

The sort of teacher who could silence an entire classroom with one raised eyebrow and then make everyone laugh thirty seconds later. I adored her class. Looking back, I suspect I loved the atmosphere as much as the lessons. My favourite classmates were there. My first innocent crush was there. Childhood, inconveniently enough, had excellent casting.

Earlier that day I'd found myself scrolling through old classmates on Facebook for no particular reason. Nostalgia is one of my less productive coping mechanisms. My brain apparently took that material, threw it into whatever editorial office dreams are produced in, and reconstructed my teacher with astonishing precision. Not just her face. Her voice. Her expressions. Even the way she'd pause before delivering one of her wonderfully dry remarks.

The subconscious is a far better archivist than we give it credit for.

I've spent the last few days trying to find out where she is now.

Yes.

I'm aware that's a little odd.

Now to the real reason I opened Safari.

I wish I didn't know.

Or perhaps I wish I knew a little less.

Knowledge has always sounded wonderfully heroic in books. In practice, it occasionally feels like buying a telescope only to discover that the universe is much larger than your optimism. I've spent too many sleepless nights reading philosophy, listening to music, wandering through essays, convincing myself that one more chapter will somehow make existence less perplexing.

It never does.

Cioran once suggested that an excess of consciousness is humanity's greatest burden. I used to dismiss him as professionally miserable. Lately I've become less certain. There seems to be a point where thinking quietly stops illuminating the world and starts casting longer shadows instead.

The peculiar thing is that I wouldn't call myself unhappy.

Just... overaware.

It's like noticing the backstage machinery during your favourite play. The performance continues, but a small part of you keeps staring at the ropes instead of the actors.

I tried ignoring it.

Didn't work.

I tried Stoicism.

Helpful, but not miraculous.

I revisited old friendships, reread favourite novels, listened to albums I'd almost memorised. They all helped, just enough to remind me that relief and resolution are not the same thing.

Somewhere along the way I found myself returning to Husserl, of all people. The philosopher I'd once dismissed as hopelessly optimistic suddenly seemed rather sensible. Maybe the point isn't to explain the entire universe before breakfast. Maybe it's enough to return to experience itself. To the taste of coffee before analysing caffeine. To music before musicology. To rain before meteorology.

Perhaps meaning doesn't disappear.

Perhaps we simply interrogate it until it leaves.

By the time I reached this paragraph, the sun had quietly risen.

The room looked different.

Or perhaps I did.

The birds had begun their usual morning symposium outside my window, entirely indifferent to my existential theatrics. They were probably discussing worms. I envied them for a moment.

Then I remembered something curious about Pandora's Box.

Everyone remembers the evils that escaped.

Far fewer remember what stayed behind.

Hope.

Stubborn.

Unfashionable.

Still there.

Perhaps that's enough for this morning.