#fiction/publish | #on/decisions | #on/action | #on/knowledge #on/uncertainty | #note/sharing Lon Setnik 2024-11-30 By turning two dollars into twenty, the lottery ticket ensured I would buy yet another. In fact, I already had, since I always purchased two at a time. As I lay the winner down, its truth revealed, I picked up the other. The future glowed in its uncertainty. What reigned, the knowing or the unknown? How quickly I had lay down the winning card, not taking a moment to notice it. I hadn’t seen the green shining glint of it along the edges, or the diagonal scratches revealing its truth; for only by damage does the truth emerge. Yet the unknown card still gathers more attention, our mind focusing on the next moment and all of its potentialities instead of the last and all of it’s realities. We imagine what might be instead of privileging what is or was, yet what might be is only imagined. For if we had catalogued all of our what “might be’s” and had compared them to all of our “what is’s,” we would have been wrong about every single one. The future's illusion can feel clearer than the image reflected in time’s rear-view mirror. Should I even mar the remaining ticket? Should I dare to scratch away the coating that keeps me from knowing? Like wiping a foggy windshield, the very act smears myself forever on the glass separating me from the messy future? What choice do I hold? Can I keep from knowing, or does my choice change what can be? I hold up both cards and peer at them. The past on the left, the unknown future on the right, and realize I’ve been paying so much attention to each of them that I’d stopped being here: I’d stopped breathing. I exhale. I put both down and looked around.