An Introduction
Isn’t it curious how a single sock can vanish into the abyss of the laundry? It’s not like socks have a mind of their own. They don’t stand up on two feet and decide, “Today’s the day I escape this cycle of monotony” and yet, there they go—disappearing into thin air without even a dramatic exit.
There’s a sense of inevitability about it, though. You can fold the other one, neatly pairing it with its mate, and imagine that the first sock is simply waiting in the dryer, patiently biding its time but deep down, you know that the second sock is never coming back. It’s gone off to live a mystery life in a dimension where missing socks form an elite society or perhaps in the pockets of the universe’s great cosmic laundry. Somewhere in a parallel world, there’s an alternate version of you with a complete set of socks while you stand barefoot and bemused.
Then, there’s the irony of it all. The way that lone sock, now irretrievably separated from its twin, will somehow find its way into the laundry again. The cycle repeats, like some cosmic game of “Where’s Waldo,” and you stand there—one sock in hand, pondering the mystery of existence. You might try to be philosophical about it, but in the end, you can’t help but feel a little betrayed. How could it leave you this way? After all, it’s just a sock. It wasn’t supposed to have such ambitions.
Perhaps that’s the fundamental absurdity of life: how even the most minor things—like a wayward sock—can pull us into a spiral of Brain Hurley questions that have no answers and so I am left with the question of which matters more – the knowledge of the thing or how learners construct or imagine their understanding of it?
