When days are full of exploration, 
 nights are full of sleep: 
 this is, and was, 
 my deeply held belief -- 

For we are built this way. We're made 
 to reach, to touch, to ask, to wonder -- 
 and there's no joy quite like 
 just figuring things out.

But when this impulse is cut off -- 
 by solitude or age or habit -- 
 then our minds find substitutes: 
 conspiracies, and oddities -- 

We're puzzle solvers, and tool builders, 
 biologists, etymologists -- 
 and the moment we stop learning, we 
 start just 

 making stuff up