USA. A bedroom. Above me hangs a ceiling fan with two pull chains, and in four years I have never once pulled the correct one first. Two chains. One commands the light. One commands the blades. They hang side by side, identical, unlabeled, like twin retainers who refuse to announce their offices. You want light. You pull. The fan begins to spin. You pull the same chain to undo your error — but no. Pulled again, it spins FASTER. There are three speeds, and you must now travel through all of them, in order, back to stillness, while the room stays dark and the fan watches. In Japan, switches are labeled, walls are sensible, and a light answers a light's command. I said this to Rick. "You get used to it," he said. "You learn which chain is which?" "No. You get used to pulling the wrong one." This is the wisest sentence I have collected this year, and it was spoken by a man holding a sandwich. I have surveyed this street. NO ONE knows their chains. Walt has lived beneath his fan for nineteen years and still guesses. Sue tied a bead to the light chain. The bead migrated. The system is corrupted. She now pulls wrong with extra steps. Dale claims he knows his chains. We have all seen his fan surge to maximum at midnight through his window. Dale is a liar in this one respect, and we forgive him. There is a deeper teaching. The fan offers a small daily failure that harms no one. Each night, America reaches into the dark, guesses, fails, sighs, and circles back to the light. A nation that stays this humble before its own ceiling will be fine. I bought a labeled fan for my bedroom. Little icons on the pulls. A lamp. A blade. I still pull wrong. The hand has its habits. The chains have their law. One chain gives light, one gives wind, and no man alive remembers which. Tonight I will guess again. Faster blades it is, then.