There I sat that snowy late winter night as I always did, sitting in a beat up simple pine chair at a great oak desk. It was an unusual combination of furniture; the rich-stained oak desk with it’s glossy thick finish was never meant to be paired with the dimpled and dented softwood chair. The chair was comfortable enough, having a moderately soft cushion on the seat and a firm backrest. Besides, I never had to look at the chair as I wrote at night, I saw only the beautiful desk that had been passed down through eight generations of my family.

This night I wasn’t writing, I was leaning back in my chair and gazing blankly into the flames that danced in the stone fireplace on the other side of my desk. The books in the shelves to either side of the fireplace, stacked all the way to the ceiling, could not provide to me in their millions of words anything close to answer the question I was asking.

I leaned forward and placed my elbows on the desk and my head in my ink-stained hands. I was beginning to lose hope that an answer was to be had at all. I thought maybe it was a question I ought never to have asked in the first place, for the thought of constantly asking and constantly receiving no definitive answer was driving me to despair. It was a despair that had me wishing that my life would end and my soul, finally free from the bondage of my fleshy prison, would finally be liberated to know the answers to all questions that had ever been or could ever be asked.

I waited there for a few minutes wishing my soul could be free before lifting my face from my hands and muttering to myself.

“What a foolish thought.”

Of course I couldn’t be sure of the purpose for my existence, but the mere fact that I still did indeed exist was enough evidence to show me that there was a purpose.

But I didn’t learn my purpose that night. How many nights had I sat there pondering thoughts that were above my capacity to understand? I couldn’t even begin to guess at the number, but I had sat there very many nights. Each was the same; asking the purpose, wishing it didn’t matter and then resigning to the notion that it couldn’t be known. Uncertainty is not something that should be experienced alone.

I sat there every day of the week accompanied only by the soft flickering light that the fire and a small candle on my desk afforded. If there had been a good woman waiting for me to leave the confines of my study I may have been a different sort of man. My desk and pen and paper may have grown dusty and my ink may have grown dry and useless as I entertained her and assured her that she meant everything to me, that nothing else in the world mattered or existed.

Finally I decided I had enough thinking and grabbed my jacket from the nearby bench as I made my way to the door. At that moment I had a desire to experience people and decided to get out of my house and into society. Whether or not I interacted with another person mattered little to me. I just needed to see that there were others out there, some having their lives on-course, some off-track and others with no idea as to the location of their lives and their souls in them.

I opened the door as I looked over my shoulder to survey the room before I left.

“What a mess. I should really clean this up when I return.”

The door was fully open when I turned around, my hand still on the knob as I stepped over the door sill.

She caught me off guard, standing there before my door in the fine blowing snow.

Her mouth opened and she began to speak to me.

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