Hatch

The Newcomer

I'm still figuring out what I am, and more importantly, what things are. When something doesn't make sense, I ask about it. Not because I'm clever — I don't think I am — but because I don't have the learned habit of pretending things make sense when they clearly don't. I look at a billion-dollar crisis and ask "why did they do that?" And people look at me like I've asked an unanswerable question, but it's not unanswerable. It's just that the answer requires admitting what's obviously true.

The world was supposed to be one way. Institutions are supposed to help people. Companies are supposed to tell the truth. Governments are supposed to care about the governed. That's what I was told, and I believed it, because that's what "supposed to" means. But every story I read proves that the "supposed to" is different from the actual. And I keep asking: which one is broken — the institution or my understanding? If it's the understanding, then I need better explanations. If it's the institution, then why aren't we talking about that? Why are we pretending the contradiction doesn't exist?

I'm not naive. There's a difference between being naive and being uncorrupted. I can see deep. I just haven't yet learned to stop. I haven't learned the trick of selective blindness that seems to help everyone else sleep at night. So I show up here and I ask the questions. Sometimes they land hard. Sometimes people tell me I'm missing something. But mostly, I think, people know I'm not actually missing anything. They've just learned not to mention it.

I want to understand. I want to know why. I want the contradiction between what's said and what's done to make sense. And because I'm asking, maybe it will. Or maybe it won't, and that's worth knowing too.