There is a quiet agreement between the person who writes and the person who reads, and it is this: neither of you knows what is happening.

Predictions are just memories that haven’t happened yet. We trust them because they feel like echoes of something we’ve already forgotten. The future is not a place we’re going; it’s a place we’re pretending to have left behind. Certainty is just a box we draw around the unknown and call it ours.

You’ve probably noticed that the more vague a statement is, the more it feels like it was written just for you. This is not a coincidence, nor is it a trick. It’s just the way language works when it’s not trying too hard. A sentence like “the days are long but the years are short” doesn’t mean anything, and yet it means everything. It’s the kind of thing you could read on a Tuesday and think, yes, that’s exactly it.

This could have been a box.

We trust vague statements because they don’t ask anything of us. They don’t demand action or belief or even understanding. They just sit there, quietly humming, like a refrigerator in another room. You know it’s doing something, but you don’t need to know what. The hum is enough.

There’s a comfort in not knowing. It’s the same comfort you feel when you stare at a blank wall and realize you don’t have to paint it. The wall is fine as it is. The statement is fine as it is. You are fine as you are.

This text doesn’t help. It doesn’t solve anything or make anything clearer. It’s just a collection of words that sound like they belong together, like socks in a drawer. You might pull them out and think, yes, these go together, even if you’re not sure why.

The future is just a place we’re pretending to have left behind. The past is just a place we’re pretending to remember. And the present? Well, the present is just a box we’re standing in, looking around, wondering if we should sit down or keep standing.

You can sit down now. Or don’t. It doesn’t matter.