CTHOSIS

The awareness of how little we really know

There’s something unsettling about the idea of a black hole. To think that there’s a threshold beyond which there is no return, with everything that crosses it locked away forever, a treasure box of mysteries that can never be opened. But then again, most of life is like that. You are surrounded by event horizons wherever you go. You can sense it in the black void at the foot of the basement stairs, or while driving in a ghostly fog that seems to erase the world beyond your windshield, or when treading water in the ocean, feeling miles of heavy nothing below your kicking feet.

You don’t particularly care to know the proportion of murders that go unsolved for lack of leads, or how easily locks can be picked and systems can be hacked. Surely someone must’ve tested the integrity of the bridge under your feet, the roof over your head, the medicine you take, the water you drink every day. Surely someone would pass by and help you dig your way out of a snowbank, or notice that your boat still hasn’t returned by nightfall, having drifted well out of sight of land. Surely there’s some adult somewhere, keeping an eye on things. But if we’re the adults, and there’s nobody else to watch out for us, it means we’re out here on our own, floating free. And no matter where you go, and no matter how safe you feel, you’re still treading water in the deep end, kicking away, vulnerable to forces you can’t control. Even now, the ocean of tomorrow is looming just outside your eyeline.

From chthonic, dwelling beneath the surface of the Earth. Pronounced “kthoh-sis.”

Excerpts from "The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows"