Chthosiskthoh-sis

n. The awareness of how little we really know. There's something unsettling about a black hole—a threshold beyond which there is no return. But most of life is like that. You're surrounded by event horizons wherever you go.

You sense it in the black void at the basement stairs, driving in fog that erases the world, or treading water in the ocean, feeling miles of nothing below. There's a thrill to those moments, dangling yourself over the abyss.

You don't know what you don't know. Every year, tens of thousands of people vanish without a trace. The owner of an antiques shop steps out for an apple and is never seen again. Surely someone tested the bridge under your feet, the medicine you take.

But if we're the adults, we're out here on our own, floating free. Maybe it's healthy to lean over the edge and stare into the abyss, to hold tighter to the structures we have—the handrail on the stairs, the rules of civil society. What might be out there? Nobody knows!