We fear not an empty future, but one that will not honor the contract we wrote for it.
If tomorrow could answer one question honestly, most of us would hesitate before asking it.
The hesitation would not come from indifference but from suspicion—because knowing too much has a way of thinning experience. And yet, despite that suspicion, we still lean toward the curtain of what has not yet happened. We tell ourselves we enjoy surprise, but what we seem to want is reassurance. Reassurance that the roads we choose will not dissolve beneath us. Reassurance that the faces we trust will not fade without warning.
That desire for reassurance quietly rearranges the present. If we cannot see what lies ahead, we begin to sketch it. At first, the sketches are harmless—small outlines drawn in the margins of ordinary days. But outlines begin to harden into boundaries, and boundaries invite defense. Before long, the imagined future feels real enough to protect.
Protection alters posture. We grow alert to shadows, reading them as signals. A delayed reply feels heavier than it should. A silence acquires edges. We react not to what has happened, but to what might. And in reacting to what might, we harden.
Hardening offers a certain clarity. When the world feels unpredictable, narrowing it can feel wise. So we reduce the variables. We draw lines. We turn inward. Some of us call it independence; others call it self-preservation. Either way, the space narrows. And in narrowed space, even blessings begin to look ordinary, because vigilance leaves little room for wonder.
It is in such narrowed space that we begin to manufacture something—not out of optimism, but out of need. Air grows thin in confinement. To breathe, we imagine openings. Not because we are certain they exist, but because without imagining them, we cannot continue.
And perhaps this is what happens to metal under strain. Left pure, it fractures. But under pressure, something unseen enters, not to weaken the metal, but to keep it from splitting.
This invention does not cancel pain, nor does it guarantee repair. It simply delays the moment when everything feels decided.
Some would call that delay denial. They would argue that clarity, however harsh, is better than comfort. And perhaps they are right to distrust what we fabricate in tight spaces.
But not every clarity sustains. Some truths arrive without oxygen. And perhaps endurance requires not the rejection of truth, but the pacing of it.
Because when everything feels decided too soon, breath shortens.
So what we practice is not certainty, and not prophecy. We practice remaining. We practice holding space between what is known and what has not yet unfolded. Not because we believe the outcome will favor us, but because witnessing requires grit.
If what sustains us is something we have fashioned—something provisional, something fragile—then it is not a promise. It is simply what keeps us from splitting.
And if remaining is all it offers, does that make it self-deception—or simply the way we keep ourselves here?