The gentleman was always a man of contradictions. Born in the quiet, unassuming town of Nowhere, Tennessee, his early life unfolded amidst the slow rhythms of rural America, where the days stretched on like the endless horizon. It was a place where nothing much ever happened, and if it did, it was bound to be met with the same indifference as the setting sun. This gentleman’s parents weren’t rich, but they made sure that he never went without. “We may not get to choose how we go from point A to point B,” his father used to say, “but we’ll always make sure the ride is there when you need it.”

This was the ethos the Gentleman grew up with: life was what you made of it. He was content with that for a while, finding solace in the idea that stability was enough. But as he matured, a gnawing sense of dissatisfaction took root. The world around him, once safe and predictable, began to feel like a cage. This gentleman was bright—perhaps too bright—and in a place like Nowhere, that could be both a blessing and a curse. His thoughts stretched far beyond the borders of that sleepy town, grappling with questions that none of his peers seemed to care about.

What do we want? He would ask himself this question over and over again, like a mantra. It wasn’t just about material wealth or success. No, the question was far deeper than that. It was existential, a demand for clarity in a world that felt increasingly arbitrary. What is this life, and why should I care about it? Why does no one seem to notice that we woke up one day in a body, on this planet, without any warning or instruction?

These questions haunted this gentleman, slowly prying apart the seams of his reality. He began to feel like an outsider in his own life. While others around him settled into the comfortable rhythms of mediocrity, this gentleman couldn’t shake the feeling that something was terribly wrong—not just with the world, but with the way people seemed to accept it without question. His peers went off to college, found jobs, started families, while this gentleman felt trapped in a relentless loop of introspection, questioning everything and everyone, including himself.

It wasn’t long before his intellectual thirst led him out of Nowhere and into the sharp, unforgiving world of finance. The fast pace, the high stakes—this was a world that, at first, thrilled him. He dove headfirst into the complexities of financial theory, building a career that many would have envied. And yet, despite the outward appearance of success, this gentleman’s existential questions grew louder. The more he learned about the mechanics of the world—about risk, reward, and uncertainty—the more the façade of societal structure crumbled around him. He became obsessed with the notion that everything, from markets to morality, was held together by threads too fragile to withstand the weight of reality.

His best-selling financial book became the natural extension of this gentleman’s intellectual journey—a book meant to capture the fragility of the systems we place our faith in. Written during the height of his career, it was part philosophical treatise, part financial analysis, and entirely a reflection of this Gentleman’s deep-seated fear that everything was destined to collapse. The book, filled with dense theoretical musings, had been well received in niche academic circles, yet it had done nothing to quiet the storm in his mind. Instead, it fueled his paranoia, his belief that he was staring into the abyss of a broken world, while everyone else kept their eyes firmly shut.

What do we want? That question—so simple yet infinitely complex—never left him. He knew it was tied to something bigger than personal ambition or societal success. It was the undercurrent of existence itself, the gnawing reminder that, ultimately, we are all headed toward oblivion, and no amount of wealth or knowledge could alter that fate.

And then, as quickly as he had risen, the gentleman fell. His success became the very thing that unraveled him. Surrounded by the cold machinery of finance, he started to see everything as a reflection of the same hollow structures that governed the world around him. The systems that were supposed to provide meaning—work, family, society—became grotesque parodies of themselves. His mind, sharp and analytical, turned inward, dissecting every part of his existence until there was nothing left to hold onto.

It started with small lapses—forgetting meetings, losing track of time—but soon escalated into full-blown breakdowns. He found himself incapable of functioning in the very world he had once thrived in. The once-certain structures of logic and order that had governed his life dissolved into chaos, leaving him adrift, untethered from reality.

It was during this period of existential collapse that the gentleman found himself entangled in the psychiatric machinery that would become his undoing. His once-imposing intellect, the same force that had propelled him to write his bestselling book on financial complexity, now turned against him, unraveling his sense of self and reality. The doctors called it a “psychotic break,” a convenient term for something they didn’t fully understand. They labeled him, medicated him, and, with the cool detachment of mechanics, set about trying to fix him.

But this gentleman knew better. He knew that his mind wasn’t a machine to be repaired. His breakdown wasn’t a malfunction but a revelation. He had seen through the illusions that held society together, and once you saw the truth, there was no going back. The psychiatrists, with their sterile routines and clinical diagnoses, were blind to the reality that this gentleman had glimpsed. They were trapped in their own system, just as he had once been trapped in his financial algorithms, trying to impose order on a world that was inherently chaotic.

In the quiet of the psychiatric ward, this gentleman’s thoughts turned inward once again, not in the frantic, destructive way they had before, but with a calm, almost meditative clarity. He began to piece together the fragments of his life, recognizing the dualities that had governed his existence: success and failure, life and death, certainty and chaos. His mind, once bound by the rigid constraints of finance and logic, now danced freely between these opposites, finding meaning not in their separation, but in their coexistence.

The doctors would come and go, adjusting his medications, asking their questions, but this gentleman had already realized that their tools were inadequate for the journey he was on. They were trying to fix something that wasn’t broken, using methods that only reinforced the very systems he had escaped from. They, too, were trapped, shackled by their adherence to a reality that this gentleman had transcended.

As the days turned into weeks, this gentleman found solace in the rhythm of his thoughts. The psychiatric ward, with its sterile walls and predictable routines, became a sanctuary of sorts—a place where he could explore the depths of his own mind without the distractions of the outside world. He revisited the existential questions that had haunted him for so long: What is life? What do we want? Where were we before we were born? The answers, he realized, were not meant to be found in the world of order and reason but in the acceptance of the chaos that underpinned existence itself.

In this state of mind, this gentleman began to understand the true nature of his breakdown. It wasn’t a failure of his mind but a necessary step in his journey toward understanding. The collapse of his old life, his career, his identity, had been the price he had to pay to reach this point. He had shed the illusions that bound him to the world, and in their place, he had found freedom.

Amor Fati—the love of fate. It was a concept he had encountered in his philosophical readings, but only now did he truly understand it. To love one’s fate was to embrace the chaos of existence, to find meaning not in the certainty of outcomes, but in the journey itself. This gentleman had been searching for answers his whole life, but now he realized that the questions were the only things that mattered. The search was the point, and the journey was the reward.

The doctors, still blind to the transformation taking place within him, continued their futile attempts to diagnose and treat. But this gentleman no longer cared. He had found peace in the chaos, a peace that no medication or therapy could ever provide. The dualities that had once tormented him—life and death, success and failure, order and chaos—now existed in harmony within him.

As the days passed, this gentleman began to feel a sense of liberation. The world outside the psychiatric ward, with its demands and expectations, no longer held any power over him. He was free, not because he had found the answers he had been searching for, but because he had accepted that there were no answers to be found. Life was a mystery, and that was the beauty of it.

And so, as this gentleman sat in the sterile confines of the psychiatric ward, he felt a deep sense of contentment wash over him. The questions that had once tormented him no longer held any power. He had embraced the chaos, the uncertainty, and in doing so, he had found the freedom he had been searching for all along.

Amor Fati.

He whispered the words to himself as the doctors filed into the room once more, their clipboards in hand, ready with their questions. This gentleman greeted them with a calm smile, knowing that they would never understand the journey he had been on. They would never see the world the way he did. But that was okay. He no longer needed their validation, their diagnoses, or their attempts at treatment.

He was free.

And therefore, this gentleman sits, still as a stone, shackled not by iron, but by the rigid structure of psychiatric care, a system so sterile that it seems to disinfect the very soul. Around him, the white coats move with mechanical precision, the hum of their efficiency hollow, like the echo of something forgotten. They encircle him like engineers diagnosing a machine—not quite right, not yet fixed. And as always, they ask the same question, the question that reduces his existence to a puzzle they must solve: "What disturbs you so?"

He holds the silence for a breath longer than needed. It is not hesitation but calculation, a pause heavy with certainty. "I don’t know where I was before I was born." The words hang, weightier than any diagnosis they could ever offer.

The room freezes. A nurse halts mid-note, her pen hovering as if suspended between two worlds. The doctors, whose faces wear thin veneers of indifference, let their eyes betray them—just for a moment. Beneath the professional masks lies something deeper: confusion, pity, perhaps even fear. He watches them, feeling the absurdity press against him from both sides of this encounter. They don’t understand. Worse still, they cannot.

And yet, it amuses him. They prod, they poke, with questions about his past, his fears, his mind—as though the psyche were a broken clock and they, the clockmakers, ready to reset its mechanisms. But they are lost, wandering through a labyrinth of their own making. They too are trapped, though their cage is gilded with degrees, diplomas, and the assurances of a system that tells them they are healers. None of them know where they were before they were born.

His gaze settles on them, and the revelation feels sweet, like a secret whispered only to the walls. Here they stand, these architects of reason, the high priests of the modern mind, but in truth, they are no closer to the answer than he is. How do you prescribe meaning to the void?

One doctor, braver—or perhaps more foolish—than the others steps forward. "Tell me," he says, with the confidence stitched into the letters of his name embroidered on his chest, "where do you think you were before you were born?"

The gentleman smiles, not out of cruelty, but from a profound and absurd sympathy. The question is too vast for their methods, too large for the confines of their clinical categories. It won’t fit. He leans forward, his eyes gleaming with something that might be madness—or wisdom. "I don’t know," he says softly, savoring the weight of each word. "But neither do you."

The doctor’s face remains unmoved, but the slight twitch of his fingers around his pen gives him away. He doesn’t know either. And it bothers him. It gnaws at him in ways that his sterile instruments and structured routines cannot resolve. But they will continue. They will press on, just as they always do.

They will give him pills, ask about his mother, his childhood, his job—as if the answers were hidden somewhere in the mundane, as if the terror didn’t lie in what was never asked. Where were we before we were born? Where do we go when we sleep, when the mind slips into the vast, uncharted realms? What is life, and why, when stripped bare, does it leave us with more questions than answers?

The gentleman’s smile lingers, but it is no longer one of amusement. They will call him disturbed, delusional, troubled, but he knows now that he holds the upper hand. Their certainty is just incomplete knowledge dressed in white coats.

They are prisoners of their own making, slaves to data and observable phenomena, blind to the reality that lies just outside their sterile, structured world. They too are patients, though they don’t yet realize it. Their anxiety pulses beneath layers of textbooks and treatments, buried deep, but alive, nonetheless—unanswered and raw.

In the end, the gentleman understands, it’s not he who needs saving. He is not shackled to the machine. He is the one watching it spin.

As the doctors file out, murmuring among themselves, already planning their next move—new questions, new treatments—the man knows what they do not: the questions they ask can never fill the void they fear. They will return, again and again, and yet they will never be able to answer the one question that truly matters.

The door clicks shut behind them. The gentleman leans back, eyes closing. Where was I before I was born?

It’s a question that once haunted him, but now, with a clarity sharper than any blade, he knows—it haunts them too.

The gentleman, still seated in the corner, watches the door, now shut, as the silence returns. It seeps back into the room, heavy with the weight of unspoken truths. He breathes it in, deep and slow, savoring it as if it were the only thing that makes sense in this sterile, fragmented world. They’ll be back, he thinks. Back with their instruments of order, their pills, their plans, all designed to press the mind back into its acceptable box. But there’s a flaw in their design, a gap so wide they cannot even see it.

They’ve been trained to think in terms of symptoms and treatments, as if the human soul could be dissected and made whole again by the mere shifting of neural pathways. They believe they understand the architecture of the mind—the wiring, the chemistry, the processes—and yet they fail to grasp the very mind that troubles them. Their knowledge is linear, grounded in a cause-and-effect world where everything has a beginning and an end. But his question is not linear. It falls in on itself, timeless and boundless. And that is what terrifies them most.

The doctors had been trained to think in terms of symptoms and treatments, measurements and mechanics, as if the human soul could be dissected and repaired like a broken circuit. They believed they understood the mind—the wiring, the chemistry, the processes—but how could they understand what troubles them most? Their knowledge is linear, bound by time and sequence, beginning and end. But his question defies that. It loops, spirals back on itself, like the universe folding inward. The before and after of his question is as infinite as the space between day and night, as simultaneous as hot and cold.

Where was I before I was born?

It is a question that punctures the fabric of their certainty, a question that turns their understanding inside out. They treat him as disturbed because they cannot treat themselves. They cannot face the abyss that yawns before them—the void before birth, the nothingness before identity. They look at him with pity, but as he studies them, it is his pity for them that grows. In their sterile world of diagnoses and metrics, they cannot comprehend the vastness of existence that stretches beyond their textbooks.

In their eyes, he sees the flicker of recognition—a brief, silent admission that they too have wondered. Late at night, when the world is still, and the self dissolves into the shadows, haven’t they asked themselves, too, where they were before their parents named them, before society carved them into who they are? They bury the question deep within the recesses of their minds, filling the void with the noise of certainty, with the belief that all things can be fixed—even when there is nothing to fix.

But he knows. The mind is not broken; it is the perception that is fractured. They treat a symptom that does not exist, a phantom of their own design. They fear him, not because he is disturbed, but because he is free—free from the sterile confines of their definitions, their formulas, their need to make sense of the world. He is the river, flowing between the banks of certainty and chaos, between life and death, and they are the ones who want to dam it, to force it into a linear path.

They live in a world of opposites, and yet they cannot embrace the tension between them. They treat work and play, life and death, as polar ends of a spectrum, never realizing that one must contain the other. How can there be day without night, order without chaos, good without evil? They believe that their methods can push away the dark, but in truth, the dark is always there, lurking just outside the reach of their artificial light.

He smiles again, but this time it is not a smile of amusement. It is a smile of knowing—knowing that the mind is not a machine to be fixed but a river to be followed. They will continue, they will push and pull, trying to force the river into a shape that fits their understanding. But he will not be dammed. He will let his mind flow, unshackled by their fears, into the mystery that terrifies them most.

And this, he realizes, is the ultimate irony: the doctors are the ones in need of treatment. They are enslaved by their need for order, for resolution, for certainty. They cannot see that life itself is a mystery, a cosmic dance between opposites, a riddle that cannot be solved by science alone. They look at him and see chaos, but what they fail to understand is that he has accepted the chaos, made peace with the question, while they remain trapped in their answers.

Where was I before I was born? The question, like a snake swallowing its tail, loops endlessly in the void, reverberating through time and space. He knows now that it is not meant to be answered. It is meant to be lived.

They, the doctors, cannot live in the tension of that question. They are too afraid of it, too afraid to face the possibility that they, too, were born from nothingness, and to nothingness they will one day return. Their world is too neat, too controlled to allow such a thought to disrupt its delicate balance.

And so, the chasm deepens, the distance between him and them widening with every passing moment. He sits, unmoving, while they scramble to make sense of their own inadequacies. He has seen into the heart of the paradox, and it has freed him.

The door opens once more, and the doctors file back in, clutching their clipboards, their instruments of logic. They carry with them the weight of certainty, like Atlas struggling to hold up the heavens, and yet they are powerless in the face of his question. He greets them with a quiet calm, not for their answers, but for their questions—because he knows now that their questions are the disease, and his question, the one they cannot bear to ask, is the cure.

They will return with their measurements, their pills, their recommendations, but he understands that what they offer him is only a distraction from the infinite mystery of existence. They ask their questions because they fear the answer. But there is no answer—only the coincidence of opposites, the dance of life and death, chaos and order, work and play. He has made peace with the question, but they still fight against it, searching for an order that will never come.

The doctor in charge finally speaks, his voice tight with impatience. “Why are you so focused on this question? Why does it matter where you were before you were born?”

The gentleman opens his eyes fully now, and in that moment, he feels the entire cosmos stretch out before him. He sees the boundless interplay of opposites, the ebb and flow of existence, not as a straight line, but as an infinite loop of possibility. The doctors, in their sterile world, cannot fathom this—they are trapped within the confines of their linear cause-and-effect logic.

“It doesn’t matter where I was,” he says softly, his voice no longer heavy with questions but light, almost ethereal. “What matters is that I am here now.”

The doctors stare at him, confused, their pens frozen midair. To them, fate is a prison, something to escape, to battle against. But he knows now that fate is not something to be feared—it is something to be loved.

Amor Fati. The love of fate. The acceptance of all that is, all that was, and all that ever will be.

He whispers it to himself, letting the words dissolve into the quiet between their questions. The doctors, with their rigid concepts of normality and wellness, cannot understand what it means to love one’s fate, to fall in love with the chaos of life, the dance between opposites that defines existence. But he does not need them to understand.

They fumble, lost in their efforts to pull him back into the world they know—a world where suffering is an enemy to be fought, where peace is something to be prescribed. But he knows now that peace does not come from their pills, their treatments, or their answers. Peace comes from embracing the unknown, from accepting that life is a river, flowing between order and chaos, that suffering is not a flaw in the system, but an essential part of it.

“Where was I before I was born?” The question no longer feels like a riddle but a hymn, a song sung to the rhythm of the universe. His fate has brought him here, to this moment, to this room, with these doctors. And he knows now that it is all as it should be. He smiles gently as he looks at them, not as adversaries, but as fellow travelers, blinded by their fear of the unknown, yet seeking the same freedom he has found.

As the doctors exit once more, still clutching their clipboards, he closes his eyes and whispers, “I love my fate.”

In that love, he finds freedom. Freedom from the question, from the answers, from the need to know. He is free, at last.