The Little Lighthouse
There is a lighthouse at the center of everything.
Its light reaches out in every direction, wide enough to hold more people than most realize. Within that light there is safety, warmth, and a set of stairs climbing toward a bulb at the top that nobody has ever actually reached.
Some people live inside the light without ever touching the stairs. They feel the warmth, they appreciate the safety, but the stairs look painful and the top looks unreachable so they stay where they are. That's fine. The light holds them anyway.
Some people climb. The stairs are hard and people fall off regularly. But as long as they land inside the light they can get up and start climbing again whenever they're ready. The light doesn't punish them for falling.
Beyond the light is darkness. Not evil. Just the reality the light acknowledges but rejects. Some people live there because the truth darkness carries resonates with them more honestly than what the light offers.
But here is what most people never discover.
If you keep walking through the darkness, past everything the light told you was the edge of things, past the rejected truths and the uncomfortable realities, you eventually stop walking not because you've hit a wall but because the ground beneath you becomes fog.
The IDK.
It stretches in every direction without end and without explanation. No map. No instructions. No lighthouse telling you what to do with it.
And standing in the fog, eyes adjusting, you notice something nobody warned you about.
Other lights. Everywhere. Each one its own lighthouse, its own warmth, its own stairs, its own darkness surrounding it.
And you realize the fog isn't emptiness. It's the space between every certainty that has ever existed.
Most people turn back here. The fog is cold and the IDK is heavy and at least the lighthouse makes sense. So they go back to climb the stairs, or rest in the light, or feed the darkness that keeps the contrast alive.
But some stand in the fog and wonder.
Can I understand the IDK and still play in the light. Can I stand in the place beyond certainty and still have warmth. Can I have more impact from out here than the darkness ever could from in there.
That question doesn't have an answer yet.
But the fact that you can ask it from the fog means you made it further than most.
(I showed a friend some scattered notes on my thoughts, and they suggested that they could put a little story together to post online, I hope you guys like it <3)