There’s a circle of light in the middle of an otherwise completely dark room. Well, it’s not exactly in the middle, but close enough that it would take a laser’s precise measurement to show that it’s not exactly centered in the room. So let’s just say it’s in the middle and move on.

There’s a circle of light in the middle of an otherwise completely dark room. Within the center of the circle of light is a chair. The chair, like the circle itself, is not exactly laser-centered, but close enough. There’s someone sitting on the chair. Their back is straight. Their feet are firmly planted on the floor. Their head is bent as if deep in thought. Or prayer. Or resignation. If someone—like me—was watching this person from a distance, they might assume any one of those options is true. Maybe the person sitting on the chair in the circle of light in the middle of an otherwise completely dark room has just been asked a series of questions as if interrogated. Maybe the person just heard that someone dear to them has died. Maybe the person is trying to remember the last time they saw their house key, which they may have misplaced sometime earlier. And without a house key, maybe that person doesn’t have a home at all. At least that’s what someone looking at this person from outside the circle of light could assume.

But the truth is—and there is a truth—the truth is that as I write this I don’t know myself who this person is. I don’t know what—if anything—this person is thinking. I don’t know why they are sitting on a chair in the not-exact-middle of an otherwise completely dark room. And I don’t know who—other than myself—might be lurking in the darkness around the circle of light.

I’ve come to learn that the story lies in the unknown. Well, that’s not exactly right. “Unknown” implies that the story may eventually become known. “Unknowable” is more precise. I’ve come to learn that the story lies in the unknowable. I’ve come to learn that there is no way for certain to know—even if I myself were that person sitting on the chair in the middle of an otherwise completely dark room—that there is no way to know the full story of what thoughts might be running through my mind. Or why any thoughts run through my mind at all. Or how, even, I came to be seated on a chair anywhere. Or why there is only one circle of light. Or whether the darkness around me is a circle, too. Or where the light that holds me in place originates from outside of the darkness. Or whether, in the end, I’m better off with the light being on at all.