If you tell me your show is called Unsolved Mysteries, I can guarantee I will never watch it. Was it a ghost? Was it the rain? WHY EVEN BOTHER. I am not a fan of an unsolved mystery, especially one that is unsolvable.
Give me a puzzle and I will stay to solve it long after everyone else has given up and gone home. But that can get a little goofy sometimes.
If my brain doesn't have a problem to solve, yo, it will find one. And that's trouble.
Examples of real problems:
Problem: There is a tree between me and a buffalo, and I'm hungry.
Solution: I need something sharp to chop at this tree till I can get through.
Problem: If only we had a way to make these plants grow closer to us, we wouldn't have to walk so far to get them.
Solution: Learn to farm.
Solving problems like this is how there got to be like 38 billion of us (estimate).
And one of those billions is me, who often stands right at the edge of the void, driving myself further in, trying to solve life like it's the ultimate problem. Like if I spend long enough here, some perfect system will click it all into place, and the answer will be revealed.
I liked atoms better when they looked like something reasonable. Electrons orbiting a nucleus — just like moons orbiting planets, planets orbiting the sun and all of it orbiting Galactus (theory).
That model made sense because it looked like something. But then we learned more: zoom in far enough and the parts of the atom don't make any sense. Quarks teleport and shit.
You and me would be super well served with a conditional in our code: one question to ask first. Is this actually a problem? A puzzle? Is this like the tree? Y/N. If no, continue. Do not process any further. Do not launch the nukes.
I'm looking at my puzzle spread out all over the floor and an infant ate one of the pieces. The cat batted a few into the vent. There's a Monopoly thimble.
I will spend two hours researching "why the f*ck is Thimble a Monopoly piece" and at the end no one will know. It will be lost knowledge. An unsolved mystery.
That is hard for me to accept. But there’s a simple reason the solution to this puzzle with the missing pieces and the constantly updating shape seems to slip away:
Because it’s not a puzzle. It's not even made of pieces. My skills and weapons are useless.
The sanest possible answer to all of this is a very deeply felt shrug.
No wise man on a park bench. Just you on the bench, and your Airpods that never f*cking connect and that one Fiona Apple song.
But wait.
If there is no solution, that means it’s not a problem.
There is no grade and there is no test. I don’t have to study.
Once in a while I can just notice it’s pretty out today.
Remind me of that next time you catch me staring off into space looking for Galactus.
