Right now I can see a shadow twiddling its thumbs maliciously on my poorly lit bedroom wall. It must be from a tree peeking through the curtains, but I haven't actually gotten up to look so for all I know it's a person with a nefarious thumb twiddling agenda who decided to climb the two metre wall to my window. Both theories are equally likely, but only one is true. Which one might it be?
Shadows burn onto the ground in a nuclear explosion, which wrecks my whole concept of why they're there. I understand objects block the light rays, so it takes longer for the light to bounce towards the shadowed section and fewer photons arrive or something along those lines... but why would the lack of light get burned onto an object as though it was a presence and not an absence?
Knowing nothing about science, it's a lot of blind faith I have in others' understanding of it. Possibly everyone's an actor, and no-one know why shadows exist or where they come from, and so the whole cast is covering up a massive conspiracy. Although the actor conspiracy might be more high-level than unexplained darkness... but I think you get the point. There's a lot of things I cannot understand, but I trust that everyone else knows more than me about and they can keep it in order.
I still don't know why the sky is blue, which is frankly a little embarrassing. Because of the ocean? Or the moon? Or wavelengths? It's definitely something like that. And I'm in a building as we speak which I had no hand in creating, and could even crash on top of me before I finish this sentence.
Update: I finished the line anyway, so I guess the builders and engineers knew what they were doing. I still don't know what an engineer actually does in a day's work. Sits down and engineers? How is that a verb??
I think a lot of the reason people get into conspiracy theories is to feel some kind of control. In a world so large and so impossible to fully know, it's a nice feeling to claim you know something wild and hidden, something discovered and something that's yours.
But I do not know anything except how to trust other people. Even for topics I know about myself, like music or Nintendo or baking, my perception is only based on what I've been told.
The tree outside my window has stopped moving. The shadow is lying still and dormant, like a leafless Oak or a hitman who is holding his breath. And I will never know the difference, and I don't really mind.