And maybe that's what makes some people different from others, I don't know. I frequently see or hear people wondering why so-and-so doesn't want to know the answers, doesn't want to know what caused such-and-such, and I've never understood why people wouldn't want as much information as possible.

If you don't have the information, though, then, if it's something from the past, you don't know that you could have acted differently, that maybe things didn't have to happen the way they did. It's a lot easier to think of past, sad events as inevitable, rather the result of blindly following what you're told, the result of making choices that may not have been the best, choices that might have ultimately contributed to the outcome.

If the fact that there is a choice isn't made clear, though, then the next time, and the next, the same choice is going to be made, and why take even the barest chance that things could have the same sad outcome?

I really shouldn't be this bothered by all of this, but I am. It wasn't even technically me that made any of the choices, but I can't help - when you read in a book about what killed your cat ten years ago, and you find out that your efforts to keep your cat healthy were, possibly, what actually led to her getting sick? It's a little tiny twist in the gut, and it's a little bit of nausea, that you didn't know that then. I don't even have the date of publication to hide behind, not when the book was originally published ten and a half years ago.

Maybe I don't have a point here. Maybe I'm just tired and in the morning I'll look at everything differently. It's just one book after all. Some things make sense, though. Some things tend to resonate, and you feel like, yes, that, that is truth, and this is one of them. Ah, Fire, baby. I didn't know. We didn't know.