There once was a philosopher who didn’t know what to do. He was, in fact, an expert in uncertainty. But, lest the reader jump ahead, let it be known that the philosopher knew neither what not to do. No, indeed, he was only ever able to supply reasons why an action would-perhaps-maybe-might-be the something which one shouldn’t do, and was persuasive enough to discourage such action, without ever succeeding in replacing it. Such energies, as one might guess, were often as repetitive as they were self-destructive—as Buridan’s ass fails to feed itself. However, they were quite entertaining: those who witnessed the philosopher’s great foldings and unfoldings upon himself were invigorated by the spectacle. This led, of course, to the philosopher’s great renown as the man who possibly knew nothing.

Among the philosopher’s many studies, he came across the Tao Te Ching, and while he found the great Lao Tzu’s faith in a coin toss to be an absolutely arbitrary and superstitious method, he felt a pang in his toes (at least, somewhere in his body, and I’m skeptical that it was merely heartburn) at the thought of such a device which could determine one’s course of action. For a time, he sought counseling, and was able to devote himself wholeheartedly into whichever program his therapist prescribed. This practice worked for as a successful cure to the philosopher’s neurosis until, eventually, the day arrived when the philosopher realized that his therapist was—just as his father had been—an idiot.

It just so happened that the philosopher chanced upon a son. Again, lest the reader jump ahead, I must inform you that this son was not the result of typical procreative activity: the philosopher—forever uncoupled—could never make up his mind whether sexual activity were a higher expression of the soul or a vulgar contortion of the body. But such was the philosopher’s fame as a man of higher unlearning, and such the mother’s desire to have an intelligent child, that the mother wrote to request the philosopher’s genes. As to the source of the philosopher’s gametes, I remain uncertain, and indeed there are many competing rumors on the subject: were these gametes supplied by blood transfusion and epigenetic transformation, or did the philosopher in fact collect his ejaculate? (And one must wonder what the impetus for such a man’s arousal could have been!)

Thankfully for the son, he most closely resembled his mother. But, by a cruel, and almost literary, twist of fate, the mother died in childbirth, yet another woman fallen victim to the negligence, censorship and violence of men (from which crime the storyteller, regretfully, admits that he is not exempt). Upon hearing of the mother’s passing, having read the official letter informing him of his son’s orphaned state, the philosopher was suddenly moved to such convulsions as was never seen in the otherwise well-comported body. Some admirers claim that the philosopher could not but be moved by his son’s sorry plight, still others claim that the philosopher was excited only to have the compass he always desired, while his doctors claim that some neurological lapsus occurred in even this most stupendous specimen.

Upon adopting his son into his own home, the philosopher began to live in such a way where weeks could go by, sweat dripping from his temples and veins bulging at the cranial seams, without the philosopher being able to make up his mind. The throes of languor and indolence would so overtake this philosopher, who never quite knew what he wanted, that his only recourse would be to ask his son, motivated equally by care and exasperation: “what do you want to do today?” By the delight in his son’s eyes, by the levity of that cherub’s giggle, he knew, at last, what to do. Thank God for children—that we might feel such love. Thank God for the wisdom of babes—to cure our demented knowledge.