04 Dec What We Don’t Know
My friend walked back from the restroom with a wide grin. “You have to see the wallpaper in there. It’s so good. I love it,” she said. We were at a new restaurant, and she kept noticing small design touches that delighted her.
Her excitement got my attention, so I decided to see for myself. In the restroom I found a soothing design made of three repeating abstract shapes. They were arranged in a way that made my brain certain there was a triangle in the center, even though nothing was actually drawn. I came back to the table and said, “I love that triangle effect.”
She blinked at me. “What triangle?”
We had a small, amused argument about it. I traced imaginary lines in the air, trying to show her what I saw. She shook her head and insisted there was nothing there. We laughed, ordered dessert, moved on.
Yesterday, I texted her about something unrelated. She didn’t respond. I sent another message. Still nothing.
And just like in that bathroom, my mind started filling in the missing lines.
Maybe she was upset.
Maybe I had said something wrong.
Maybe her silence meant something.
It is surprising how quickly the mind reaches for a story when something feels unfinished. How fast it pulls shape from absence and calls it truth. The triangles on the walls. The imagined emotion. The quiet worry that tries to explain someone else’s silence.
The reality is, I still don’t know why she hasn’t responded yet. She might be traveling. She might be tired. She might have read the message in the middle of something and meant to return to it. People’s lives are full in ways we rarely see.
But I keep thinking about that wallpaper and the triangle that was never there, how convincing it felt, and how ready my mind was to complete the pattern.
Maybe the gentler practice is to leave some spaces unfilled. To let people have their own moods and moments without turning them into a reflection of our own fears. To let feelings belong to the person who is feeling them. To let silence belong to the person who is keeping it. To let people fill in the blanks themselves if they have something to say.
What we don’t know doesn’t have to hurt us.
Sometimes the thing we are sure we see is only the illusion we constructed ourselves.