Borrowed Wisdom

"The people who seem most certain are usually just better at the performance. The rest of us are doing the same dance with worse costumes."

The kitchen had that particular quality of late-afternoon stillness.

I stood at the counter with the bag of potatoes Mum had left out, their earthy scent rising as I lifted them from the mesh. They were good potatoes — the kind with dirt still clinging to their skins and that particular density that promised they'd crisp properly in the oven. Six of them, maybe seven. Enough for the four of us, with leftovers for tomorrow.

I filled the sink with cold water and submerged the first potato, using my fingers to work the dirt loose from its skin. The water clouded immediately, brown swirling into the clear, the evidence of earth releasing reluctantly from flesh. There was something satisfying about this — the transformation from field-grubby to kitchen-clean, the preparation that preceded preparation.

This was the thing about kitchens. About homes. The way your body learned them so completely that you could navigate blindfolded, reaching for objects that were exactly where they'd always been.

I scrubbed the second potato, then the third, letting the repetitive motion occupy my hands while the grit accumulated in the sink basin. The skins would stay on — they always did for roasting, crisping up golden and slightly chewy at the edges while the flesh inside went fluffy and soft. One of Mum's unwritten rules, absorbed through years of observation: never peel a roasting potato. The skin is half the point.

The rhythm came easily — scrub, rinse, set aside. Scrub, rinse, set aside. The kind of task that occupied your hands completely while leaving your mind free to wander.

Which was, perhaps, not entirely a good thing.

My thoughts drifted without permission, circling back to the corridor outside the Cultural Hall. To Megan standing before me with that particular quality of courage in her expression — the look of someone who had decided to say something difficult and was committed to seeing it through.

Do you feel anything?

The question had been so direct. So precisely aimed at the thing I'd been avoiding for months, maybe years. She'd cut through all the polite evasions and social choreography and asked the one question that actually mattered.

And I'd told her the truth.

I don't know what I feel. About anything.

The fourth potato was clean now, its skin smooth and damp, ready for cutting. I set it with the others on the chopping board, a small pile of earthy spheres awaiting their transformation into something more.

The nothing. That's what she'd called it. The nothing you feel. She'd named it so simply, so accurately, that I'd felt momentarily exposed — as if she'd seen something I'd thought I was hiding.

Because that was exactly what it was. Nothing. An absence where something should be. The gap between what I was supposed to experience and what I actually experienced.

Everyone around me seemed to operate on a system I couldn't access. The attractions and interests and romantic possibilities that drove so much of life at my age, in my community. Find someone. Get married. Start a family. The path was clear, the expectations well-established. Every testimony meeting featured some returned missionary talking about meeting their eternal companion. Every fireside included couples sharing how they'd known — that moment of certainty, that spiritual confirmation, that undeniable feeling that this was the person they were meant to be with.

And I just... couldn't seem to feel it.

Not with Megan. Not with anyone.

The last potato joined its companions. I drained the dirty water from the sink, watching it spiral down the drain, then retrieved the large knife from its block. The blade was sharp — Dad maintained the kitchen knives with the same quiet attention he brought to everything — and the potatoes yielded easily as I quartered them, each cut producing pieces that would crisp at the edges while staying fluffy within.

The technique was Mum's, learned through years of Sunday observation: cut them this size, not smaller. Parboil for exactly eight minutes. Drain and let them steam dry. Rough up the edges with a fork. Then into the roasting tin with the lamb drippings, turned once to coat, and into the oven until golden and crackling.

I'd watched her do it hundreds of times. Had helped, increasingly, as I'd grown old enough to be trusted with knives and boiling water and the general choreography of meal preparation. The knowledge had transferred without formal instruction, absorbed through proximity and repetition until it lived in my hands as much as my head.

That was how most important knowledge transferred, I supposed. Not through lectures or lessons, but through watching. Through being present while someone else did the thing, until you could do it yourself without quite remembering when you'd learned.

Faith was supposed to work the same way. Grow up in the church, watch your parents pray and serve and believe, and eventually the belief would take root in you too. The testimony would come. The spiritual experiences would accumulate. You'd find yourself knowing what they knew, feeling what they felt, connected to the same divine reality that gave their lives meaning and purpose.

And for some people, it worked exactly like that. Charles seemed to have faith that came easily — not unexamined, but natural. A foundation he could build on without constantly questioning whether the ground beneath him was solid.

For me, the questions never stopped. The foundation never quite settled. I kept waiting for the testimony to arrive, for the spiritual confirmation that would transform intellectual assent into genuine conviction. And it kept not coming.

The nothing, again. In a different register, but the same essential absence.

I filled a pot with water and set it on the stove to boil, then turned my attention to the carrots.

The carrots were different. Unlike potatoes, they needed peeling — the outer skin too tough and bitter to serve, the bright orange flesh beneath requiring exposure before it could caramelise properly in the oven's heat. I retrieved the peeler from its drawer.

The first carrot was thick and satisfyingly solid, the kind that came from good soil and patient growing. I held it steady and drew the peeler down its length, watching the thin curl of orange skin separate and fall. There was something meditative about this — the steady motion, the gradual revelation, the transformation from rough to smooth.

Was something wrong with me?

The question had been lurking beneath the surface for longer than I wanted to admit. At first, I'd told myself I was just focused on other things — university, the volunteer work at the Haven, the general business of figuring out who I was and what I wanted. Romance could wait. There was plenty of time.

But plenty of time kept passing, and the feelings everyone else described so easily continued to not arrive. I could recognise that Megan was attractive — objectively, intellectually, the way you might recognise that a painting was well-composed or a sunset was beautiful. But the recognition didn't translate into anything deeper. Didn't spark whatever it was supposed to spark.

I look at you, and I can see objectively that you're attractive. I can list all the reasons why this should work. And then I wait for something to happen inside me — some feeling, some spark, some sign that this is what everyone talks about when they talk about connection. And there's just...

Nothing.

I'd said it out loud. To Megan, of all people. The kindest possible recipient of such a confession, and still it had felt like failure. Like admitting to a deficiency I couldn't explain or fix.

The first carrot was finished, its skin discarded, its flesh bright and clean. I set it aside and reached for the second, beginning the process again. Peel. Turn. Peel. Turn. The repetitive motion anchoring me in the present even as my thoughts continued their restless circling.

The light through the window had shifted slightly, the sun continuing its slow arc toward the western horizon. The kitchen remained quiet around me — the hum of the refrigerator, the distant thump of Charles's music, the occasional creak of the house settling. Dad had retreated to his study at some point. Mum was still behind her closed door, resting or preparing or doing whatever it was she needed to do.

The second carrot was finished. Then the third. The pile of bright orange vegetables growing beside the pile of discarded peels. My hands moved through the familiar motions while my thoughts continued their well-worn circuits.

Megan had been kind. That was the thing that kept circling back. She could have been hurt, offended, wounded by my confession of nothing. Instead, she'd thanked me for my honesty. Had offered friendship without pressure. Had even suggested that the nothing might not be a flaw — just a different timeline, a different way of moving through the world.

Not everyone runs on the same timeline.

I wanted to believe that. Wanted to trust that whatever was missing would eventually arrive, that I was just a late bloomer in some cosmic sense, that the machinery everyone else possessed would eventually install itself in me too.

But wanting to believe something wasn't the same as believing it. And the longer the nothing persisted, the harder it became to maintain faith in its eventual resolution.

The fourth carrot. The fifth. The peeler moved steadily, revealing orange beneath orange, the skins accumulating in their own small heap.

I gathered the peels and deposited them in the small compost bin on the bench, then began cutting the carrots into chunks — not too small, or they'd turn to mush in the oven; not too large, or they wouldn't cook through properly. Another piece of inherited knowledge, absorbed without formal instruction.

The water was beginning to warm, small bubbles forming on the bottom of the pot. Not boiling yet, but getting there. I watched them rise and break at the surface, the physics of heat transfer made visible in miniature.

"You're murdering that carrot."

Charles's voice came from the doorway, cutting through my reverie. I looked down at my hands and realised I'd picked up one of the cut pieces and was turning it over and over, examining it as if it contained some secret worth discovering.

"I'm inspecting it," I said. "Quality control."

"You're spacing out." He crossed to the refrigerator and extracted a can of lemonade. "You've been staring at that carrot for like two minutes. I was timing."

"You were not."

"I was. On my phone." He popped the can open and took a long drink. "Two minutes and fourteen seconds of intense carrot contemplation. New household record."

I set the carrot down with the others, acknowledging the fair criticism. "I was thinking."

"Dangerous habit." He leaned against the counter, watching me with an expression that was harder to read than his usual configuration. The performative irreverence was there, but something else lurked beneath it. Actual attention, maybe. Actual curiosity. "What were you thinking about?"

"Nothing."

"That was a very intense nothing face." He tilted his head, studying me. "You've been making that face all day, actually. Since church. Since before church, probably. This morning at breakfast you looked like someone had asked you to solve a maths problem in a language you don't speak."

"I wasn't aware my face was providing so much entertainment."

"Your face is a constant source of entertainment. It's very expressive. You just don't know it because you can't see it from the inside." He took another drink of his lemonade, then set the can on the counter. "Is this about Megan?"

The question landed with more precision than I'd expected. I glanced at him, trying to assess how much he actually knew versus how much he was fishing for.

"What makes you think it's about Megan?"

"Because I saw her corner you after the meeting. You were talking for ages. And because you looked like..." He paused, searching for the right comparison. "Like someone who'd just had a conversation they didn't know how to process. Which is different from your usual post-church expression, which is more like someone who's mildly tired and ready for lunch."

"You're very observant today."

"I'm always observant. I just don't usually share my observations because people find it unsettling." He pushed off from the counter and moved to stand beside me at the stove, peering into the pot of water as if it contained something fascinating. "So? What happened?"

I considered deflecting. Considered telling him it was none of his business, which it wasn't. The conversation with Megan felt private — not secret, exactly, but personal in a way that resisted casual discussion.

But Charles wasn't asking casually. That was the thing I kept noticing. Beneath the banter and the theatrical irreverence, there was something genuine in his attention. Something that suggested he actually wanted to know, not just for entertainment but because he cared.

And maybe that was enough.

"She asked me if I felt anything," I said. The words came slowly, feeling their way toward expression. "For her. And I told her the truth."

"Which is?"

I watched the water, the bubbles rising and breaking with increasing frequency. Almost ready for the potatoes.

"I don't know what I feel. About anything."

Charles was quiet for a moment. I could feel him processing beside me, turning the words over in his mind the way I'd been turning that carrot in my hands.

"That's honest," he said finally.

"That's the problem. Honest isn't the same as helpful. It doesn't give her anything to work with. It doesn't even give me anything to work with."

"Maybe that's okay, though." He moved to the chopping board where the quartered potatoes waited. "Maybe not knowing is just where you are right now. Doesn't mean it's where you'll be forever."

"Maybe." I didn't sound convinced, even to myself. "But everyone else seems to know. Or at least to feel things strongly enough that they can figure it out as they go. I just feel... empty. Where all the feelings are supposed to be."

The water reached a proper boil, bubbles churning the surface with sudden violence. I lifted the pot carefully and lowered the quartered potatoes into the water one by one, watching each one sink and then bob back toward the surface.

Charles had picked up one of the peeled carrots and was examining it with exaggerated interest. "Can I tell you something?"

"If I said no, would it stop you?"

"Probably not." He set down the carrot and leaned against the counter beside me. "Everyone acts like they know what they're doing. Like they've got all the answers figured out and they're just executing the plan. But most of them are making it up as they go. The confidence is performance. The certainty is packaging."

"You think people are faking it?"

"I think people are performing the version of themselves they think they're supposed to be." He shrugged, the movement casual but the words carrying weight. "Like... okay, take Hamish Marsden. You know Hamish?"

"From the ward. Yeah."

"Hamish acts like he's got everything sorted. Testimony like a rock, mission planned down to the exact date, already knows which girl he's going to marry even though he hasn't technically asked her yet. The whole package. Right?"

"I guess."

"Except I was at a stake youth activity last year, and I ended up in this random conversation with him while we were waiting for the bus. And he told me — not like a confession, just casually, like it was normal — that he has no idea if any of it is real. The church stuff, I mean. He said he just keeps doing the things because the alternative is admitting he doesn't know, and that feels worse than pretending."

I stirred the potatoes gently, keeping them from sticking to the bottom of the pot. The water had calmed now, settling into a steady simmer that would cook them through without violence.

"Hamish told you that?"

"Hamish told me that." Charles nodded, his expression unusually serious. "And I don't think he's unusual. I think a lot of people are carrying around doubt and confusion and they just don't talk about it because the culture doesn't really allow for it. You're supposed to know. You're supposed to have a testimony. Admitting you don't feels like failure."

"So you're saying everyone's faking it?"

"I'm saying the line between faith and performance is blurrier than anyone admits." He picked up the knife I'd been using and began cutting the carrots into smaller chunks, his movements less practised than mine but competent enough. "And I'm saying that maybe you're not as broken as you think. Maybe you're just one of the people who can't quite manage the performance. Which is uncomfortable, but it's not the same as being defective."

I leaned against the counter, watching my brother work through the pile of carrots with that particular concentration he brought to tasks when he was actually trying. There was something reassuring about the scene — the two of us in the kitchen, preparing food together, talking about things that mattered beneath the cover of ordinary activity.

"When did you get philosophical?" I asked.

He grinned, the serious expression breaking momentarily. "I've always been philosophical. You just never paid attention because you were too busy brooding in corners."

"I don't brood."

"You absolutely brood. It's your primary hobby. You've elevated brooding to an art form." He finished another carrot and reached for the next. "What else needs doing?"

I looked around the kitchen, mentally cataloguing the remaining tasks. "Potatoes need to finish parboiling, then drain and dry. Carrots go in the roasting tin with them. Gravy happens once the meat's done."

"So we're waiting."

"We're waiting."

Charles continued cutting, his attention focused on the task. The kitchen filled with the soft sounds of knife against board, water simmering, the distant pulse of music from his abandoned bedroom.

"For what it's worth," he said eventually, his eyes still on the carrots, "I don't think there's anything wrong with not knowing. About the feelings stuff, I mean. Or the faith stuff. Or any of it."

"No?"

"No." He looked up, meeting my eyes with an expression that was entirely serious for once. "I think everyone's supposed to figure this out on their own timeline. And I think the people who act like they've got it all sorted are mostly just scared to admit they're as confused as everyone else."

"That's very reassuring."

"I try." He returned his attention to the carrots. "Also, I read it somewhere. On the internet, probably. But it sounded good, right?"

The echo of his comment from church — the same self-deprecating acknowledgment, the same admission that his wisdom might be borrowed rather than original — made something loosen in my chest. A knot I hadn't realised I was carrying, easing slightly.

"It sounded good," I agreed.

The timer in my head said the potatoes were nearly ready — another minute or two before they'd need draining. I retrieved the colander from its drawer and set it in the sink, preparing for the next step in the process.

"Thanks," I said, the word coming out more quietly than I'd intended.

Charles glanced at me, his expression flickering through something I couldn't quite read before settling back into its usual configuration. "For what?"

"For..." I gestured vaguely, encompassing the conversation, the help, the unexpected depth beneath the surface. "For not making it weird."

"I'm always making it weird. It's my specialty." But something in his voice softened the deflection. "You're my brother. I'm supposed to help. Even if helping just means cutting carrots and stating the obvious."

"The obvious is sometimes the hardest thing to see."

"That's very deep. You should write that down." He nudged me with his elbow, a gesture that was half mockery and half affection. "Put it on a motivational poster. Hang it in your room. 'The obvious is sometimes the hardest thing to see — Jerome Smith, 2018.'"

"You're insufferable."

"I'm delightful. There's a difference."

The potatoes had reached that point of perfect parboil — soft enough to fluff at the edges when shaken, firm enough to hold their shape during roasting. I drained them carefully into the colander, letting the steam rise around my face, hot and damp and carrying that particular starchy smell that meant Sunday dinner was progressing on schedule.

Charles had finished the carrots, the bright orange chunks arranged in a neat pile on the chopping board. Everything was coming together — not perfectly, the gravy still uncertain, the timing still approximate, the outcome still dependent on a dozen small variables I couldn't entirely control. But it was coming together.

Maybe that was enough. Maybe you didn't need to have all the answers in advance. Maybe you just needed to keep moving through the steps, trusting that something edible would emerge at the end even when you weren't sure how all the pieces fit together.

Maybe faith worked the same way.

Maybe life did too.

"Thanks," I said again, meaning it more this time.

Charles just nodded, his attention drifting toward the window where the afternoon light was beginning to soften toward evening. But something in his posture suggested he'd heard me. Understood what I was thanking him for.

And for a brief moment, I wondered whether Charles might be faking life too.