Lighthouse Horror Podcast - I'm a Monster Survival Specialist. I have 5 Strange Rules

Episode Date: April 6, 2026

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My name is Logan Pierce, and I take strange jobs. Officially, I'm a contractor who works wildlife threats, environmental hazards, and recovery work, in areas where standard teams either won't go or have already failed. Unofficially, I get called when something doesn't fit a category, when the damage doesn't match the animal, and when multiple people report different things in the same place, and everything sounds wrong. I'd worked across 12 states before I ever took a contract up here in New York, moving between forest, desert roads, and isolated towns, where missing persons cases tend to get buried under bad explanations.

Most of those jobs followed a pattern once you spent enough time in the field. You'd get a location, a timeline, and just enough physical evidence to narrow it down to one thing, even if that thing wasn't officially acknowledged. Once you understood the behavior, you could track it, control your exposure and get out clean if you didn't make mistakes. The first case that brought me into the Hudson Valley looked simple on paper. A man had gone missing near a service road that cut between a river town and a stretch of dense woodland that hadn't been properly maintained in years.

His truck was found intact, keys still on the ignition, with no signs of forced entry or mechanical failure. Search teams had already been through the area twice, and both times they came back with nothing that lined up with a normal disappearance. What made it worse were the witness reports. One group claimed they saw something large moving through the trees at dusk, something tall enough to break branches without slowing down, and heavy enough to leave deep impressions in the ground that didn't match any known animal in the region. Another person, staying at a a roadside motel about 10 miles south, reported a dog standing outside his room late at night, staring directly at him with what he described as a human expression stretched across its face.

He couldn't explain it clearly, only that it didn't behave like an animal, and that it seemed to react the moment he looked at it. Then there were calls from people living closer to the hills. They didn't describe anything visual at all. What they reported. was a sound. A long mechanical siren they carried across the tree line without any clear source. It wasn't tied to weather, traffic, or emergency systems, and it didn't repeat on any schedule that made sense. Every person who mentioned it described the same thing happening immediately afterward. The woods going completely still. Like everything living in that area had stopped moving all at once. On their own, each of these reports could be dismissed. Together, they

overlapped. That was the first time I realized what was actually happening in that region. Wasn't a simple problem presenting itself in different ways, and it wasn't confusion from unreliable witnesses. It was multiple things moving through the same area at the same time, crossing paths, stacking on top of each other, and leaving behind evidence that didn't believe along to just one source. The river made it worse. Several reports came in from people who'd been near the Hudson late at night, moving along older docks and broken shoreline access points that weren't used anymore. They described lights drifting low over the water, moving slowly from the direction of New Jersey and crossing into New York without any visible aircraft or sound. Some

said the lights held position for long periods of time. before shifting direction all at once, while others claimed they disappeared the moment anyone tried to approach him. No one could agree on what they were looking at, but everyone agreed on one thing. Something changed when those lights showed up. By the time I stepped into that case, I stopped treating it like a standard assignment. The evidence didn't support a single target, and trying to force it into one explanation would have gotten me killed within the first 24 hours.

So I adjusted. Instead of trying to understand everything at once, I started breaking the area down into patterns I could survive. Not theories or speculation, and not anything I needed to explain to someone else. Just rules. Simple, direct, and tied to specific situations that had already proven

they could go wrong very fast. Every one of those rules came from contact. Not observation or guesswork. They cost time, equipment, and in some cases people who didn't make it back out of those woods or off that shoreline. I didn't write them down because they sounded good, or because they made the story clearer. I wrote them down because I needed something I could follow when the situation stopped making sense, and there wasn't time to figure it out.

There are five that matter in that part of New York, five that apply to the river. the hills and the stretches of land in between where things don't stay separate for long. You won't get them from any official source, and you won't hear them explained clearly by locals either, because most people who've had contact don't talk about it in a way that lines up clean. They talk around it. They warn you without telling you why. And by the time it makes sense, you might already be dead. If you're anywhere near that corridor, driving those back,

back roads, staying in those motels, or walking too far past where the maintained trails end. You need to understand something before anything else. This isn't one problem, it's several. But there are rules to help you survive. And the first one is the easiest to break if you don't recognize what's happening around you. Rule 1. Never follow heavy footsteps into the trees. The first time I learned that rule, I was walking off a service road that ran along the edge of the Catskills.

About 15 miles north of a river town that had already logged two disappearances in the same month. The road itself was barely maintained, just a strip of compacted dirt and loose gravel with drained ditches on either side. Cutting through thick sections of forest that hadn't been cleared in years. It gave me enough visibility to track movement. and more importantly, it gave me space to move if something came out of the tree line faster than expected. The missing man's truck had been found less than a mile from where I started. No damage, no sign of struggle, and no indication that he'd tried to turn around once he parked. They told me he either left the vehicle willingly or someone had drawn him out in a way that didn't trigger panic right away.

I followed the direction of travel based on the position of the driver's door and the first set of impressions I found in the dirt just off the road. At first the tracks didn't make sense. They were too deep for a person walking in a normal pace and the stride length was inconsistent, alternating between short steps and long, stretched intervals that didn't match a human gate. The soil in that area holds impressions well, especially after a light rain. So I took my time examining each mark before moving forward. Some of them had clear edges, almost like pressure had been applied straight down instead of rolling from head to toe, and others looked partially collapsed, as if something heavier had stepped there.

About 200 yards in, I found the first piece of damage that confirmed I wasn't dealing with anything standard. A young tree, maybe four inches thick, had been snapped clean at chest height, and pushed sideways into another trunk. The brake wasn't splintered the way it would be from a fall or storm pressure. It was compressed and split, like something had grabbed it and forced it out of the way without slowing down. I checked the surrounding area for tool marks or signs of mechanical interference, but there was nothing, no cuts, no blade lines, and no debris that would suggest equipment. A few minutes later, I came across the deer.

It was caught between two trees about six feet off the ground, with a torso torn open and most of the internal tissue missing. The positioning alone ruled out known predators in that region. Whatever had done it had lifted the body and either held it there or wedged it into place while feeding. There were no drag marks leading up to it, and the ground below was disturbed. but not in a pattern that suggested a struggle had taken place there. And that was the point where I should have reassessed. But instead I kept following the tracks. The road was still visible behind me,

but I'd moved far enough into the tree line that the spacing between trunks started to tighten, forcing me to adjust my path as I went. Visibility dropped quickly once the canopy thickened overhead, and the ground shifted from packed dirt to uneven, terrain covered in roots, fallen branches, and soft patches that didn't hold impressions as clearly. I slowed down to compensate, checking my footing and marking my direction in relation to the road so I could pull back if I needed to.

That's when I heard the first set of footsteps. They weren't coming from ahead of me. They were coming from off to my left, deeper in the woods, moving parallel to my position at a pace that matched my own. The sound was heavy enough to register through the ground before I could isolate it in the air, a dull, consistent pressure that didn't match the lighter movement of deer or smaller animals. I stopped to confirm it, and the moment I did, the sound stopped with me. I waited. No movement or shift in position. Nothing.

When I started forward again, the footsteps resumed, keeping the same. same distance and angle, like whatever was out there, had adjusted to my path and was tracking me without closing in. I angled slightly left, trying to bring the source into view, and that's when the terrain started working against me. The ground dipped into a shallow depression filled with thicker undergrowth, and the trees closed in tighter, forcing me to slow down and step carefully to avoid losing balance. And then I saw it.

not clearly or enough to identify, but something crossed between two trees about 30 yards out, covering distance faster than it should have been able to at that size. There was no corresponding sound to match the movement, no break in branches or shift in weight that lined up with what I saw. It passed through the gap, and it was gone before I could adjust my position, leaving behind a momentary disturbance in the foliage that settled too quickly. The footsteps changed after that. They didn't stay parallel anymore.

They started angling inward. I stopped again, this time with my back to a wider tree trunk, and I listened for a full ten seconds before moving. When I stepped forward, the sound closed distance faster than before, cutting across my path instead of pacing it. And that's when it clicked. Whatever I was tracking wasn't trying to stay hidden. It was trying to pull me.

Every step I took off the road, it made the terrain tighter, the visibility worse, and my ability to move cleanly more limited. The deeper I went, the more advantage shifted away from me and toward whatever was controlling the movement around me. It didn't need to rush me or force a confrontation. It just needed to keep me following until I reached a point where I couldn't reposition fast enough to get out. So I backed up? Slow at first, then faster once I cleared the thicker undergrowth, and I felt the ground level out beneath my feet. The footsteps followed, adjusting again to match my retreat, but they didn't close the distance once I moved back toward

open ground. I kept my direction locked on the road, and I didn't look for it again, even when I heard movement behind me that suggested it had shifted position. When I broke through the tree line and hit the service road, that's when the sound stopped completely. There was no retreat or pursuit, just nothing. I stood there for a full minute, checking both signs of the road, and listening for any sign that it had followed me out. But the forest stayed still, not in that empty way. It felt controlled, like whatever was in there had decided not to continue once I stepped back into a space where it didn't have the same advantage.

And that was the last time I followed tracks like that into cover without understanding what I was dealing with. The size, the strength, and the movement pattern, all pointed to something people would write off as folklore. I think you know what I'm referring to. There have been a lot of sightings of him lately. So just remember, if you hear something heavy moving alongside you in deep woods, get to open ground.

Rule two. If a dog smiles at you, close your eyes and don't open them until it's gone. I didn't walk into that motel thinking, about anything like that. The motel sat off a two-lane highway, about 10 miles south of the last search area, positioned between a strip of trees and a stretch of cracked asphalt that doubled as both a parking lot and an access road. Wasn't abandoned, but it wasn't maintained either. The sign out front had half its letters burned out, and the office window was covered with a thin film of dust that hadn't been wiped down in a long time. Still, it had power, running water, and a clerk

who didn't ask questions, which is usually all I need. I took a room at the end of the row and parked my truck where I could see it from inside. After checking the locks, testing the window, and setting my gear within reach, I sat down to review what I had so far. The case didn't line up cleanly, and that usually means something else is in the area that hasn't been accounted for yet. I kept the lights low, and I let my eyes adjust to the outside glow so I could see through the glass without catching my own reflection. Stayed quiet for a while. And then sometime after midnight, I heard something move outside the door. The sound was light at first, more of a drag than a step, like something

brushing across the pavement instead of lifting cleanly off it. I stayed still and listened long enough to confirm direction before shifting slightly to get a better angle on the window. The noise stopped as soon as I moved, and then resumed a second lighter, closer to the wall and tracking along the length of the room. That told me it wasn't random. It knew where I was. I leaned forward just enough to bring the edge of the window into view without exposing my full position, keeping my movement controlled, so I didn't give it anything sudden to react to. At first, all I could see was a partial shape near the corner. low to the ground, and held at a height that suggested an animal rather than a person.

And then it stepped into view. It looked like a dog. Nothing about the body stood out immediately. Medium size, dark coat, proportions that wouldn't draw attention in daylight. But the way it held itself didn't match what I was seeing. It wasn't scanning, sniffing, or shifting weight the way animals do. in their alert. It was just standing perfectly still, facing the window directly, with its head angled just high enough to keep its eyes level with mine. And that's when it changed. The mouth

pulled back slowly, stretching wider than it should have, exposing teeth in a way that didn't match the structure underneath. There was no tension in the rest of the body, no raised fur, no shift in stands? Just that expression, held steady. I'd heard the term before, smile dog. At the time, it meant nothing to me. It does now. The moment I recognized that something was off, it reacted. Not by moving closer, but by adjusting just enough that the space between us felt different. It was still outside, still separated by the wall in the glass, but the distance didn't feel like protection anymore. It felt like something waiting to be crossed.

And that was the point where most people would keep looking, trying to confirm what they're seeing, trying to make sense of it. I didn't. I shut my eyes immediately, and I held a position, keeping my breathing steady and my hands still, so I wouldn't make noise without thinking. The instinct to open them again hit almost right away stronger than it should have been for something that even hadn't moved yet. That's how it works. It doesn't force you. It just makes you want to check. The sound shifted again. It moved from the window toward the door, then back along the wall, tracing the same path in a slow,

controlled pattern. I could hear it stop directly in front of the window at one point, close enough that the movement carried through the structure and into the floor beneath my feet. There was no impact, no attempt to get inside, just presence. And then it started making noise. Not a bark or a growl, exactly. It was something lower and uneven, like it was trying to form a sound that didn't belong to it. It caught off abruptly. followed by another pass along the wall that ended near the door. The breathing came after that, steady and controlled, close enough that I could track its position without seeing it.

I stayed still. That's the only reason this didn't turn into something else, because the longer it stays close, the harder it gets not to open your eyes and look. Your brain starts trying to justify it, telling you that a quick glance won't matter, that you just need to confirm it's still there, or that it's gone. That's the point where most people break the rule, and that's when whatever's outside stops waiting.

But I kept my eyes closed until the movement stopped completely, and then I waited after that. Even then, I counted out more time than I needed before opening him again, making sure I wasn't reacting to a pause that could have been part of the same pattern. When I finally looked, the parking lot was empty, and there was nothing near the window or the door that suggested anything had been there at all. I checked anyway. The pavement outside had marks on it, but they didn't form a clean track, and they didn't match the weight distribution I'd expect from a normal animal.

The pattern looked incomplete. like whatever had been there didn't move the way it should have. The next morning, I asked the clerk if anyone else had reported anything during the night. He hesitated before answering, and then he told me someone in the room across from mine had checked out early. When I asked what they said, he shook us head, and he told me they couldn't explain it, only that they kept asking if the motel allowed animals on the property. And that was the first time I heard the name again. Not from him.

From a guy at a gas station a few miles down the road later that day. When I mentioned what I had seen, he didn't ask questions or try to correct me. He just nodded once and said, Oh, you mean smile dog. Rule 3. If a strange siren goes off. Get below the tree line. I didn't recognize the sound the first time I heard it.

That's part of the problem. Nothing about it matches exactly. I was working off an old fire access road that climbed along a ridge about 20 miles north of the river, following a set of signs that suggested someone had passed through the area recently and hadn't come back out. The road had been abandoned for years, which meant the surface was uneven and partially reclaimed by the surrounding growth, but it still gave me a clear path up toward higher ground where I could get a better view of the terrain.

The climb was gradual at first, with long stretches of open space between sections of trees that had started to close in from both sides. That kind of layout, it makes it easier to track movement and easier to retreat if something happens in a way you don't expect. I kept my pace steady, checking the edges of the road and the slope above. it for any sign that someone had left the main path. About halfway up, I found a fresh disturbance. Not tracks, not clearly defined, but enough broken surface and displaced material

to tell me something had moved through recently. The pattern didn't match the earlier case from the service road, and it didn't line up with known animal movement in that area either. It looked like someone had come through fast and then changed direction near the top of the ridge instead of continuing along the road. I moved up to the bend where the terrain opened slightly. And that's when I heard it.

The sound carried from somewhere beyond the ridge, long and mechanical. I stopped to listen, and that was the first mistake. The second was looking up. The sound makes you do that. It draws your attention upward, pulling your focus away from the ground

and the surrounding area. and forcing you to search for a sound that doesn't reveal itself immediately. For a few seconds, nothing else exists, just the noise and the need to locate where it's coming from. And then the woods went still. Not quiet in a natural way. Not the kind of silence you get when wind drops or distant noise fades. Everything stopped at once. No movement in the trees, no shifting branches, no background activity.

The entire area held position like something had cut off all external input and left only that sound. And that's when I saw it. It moved along the ridge line far above me, partially obscured by the angle of the slope and the spacing of the trees, but visible enough to register the scale before anything else. It was too tall to be mistaken for a person with a frame that extended well above, the tree line in sections where the ground dipped, giving me a clear view of its outline as it crossed between open gaps. I saw the head, if that's what you call it.

Two long structures extended upward from the top of its frame, shaped like sirens mounted on poles, angled slightly outward, and rotating in small controlled movements as the sound shifted with them. There was no visible phase, no features I could map to anything human or animal, just those two points projecting the noise across the area in a pattern that didn't match any system I understood. And that's when the name came back to me? Sirenhead?

I'd heard it before in passing. The same way I'd heard, Smile Dog, always tied to stories that didn't hold up under scrutiny, and didn't need to once you saw something real. I hadn't given it any weight at the time, but standing there on that road, with the sound cutting through the trees and the shape moving across the ridge, I didn't need further confirmation. I needed to move. The problem is that that sound makes moving harder than it should be. After a few seconds, I dropped down, not straight down, not blindly, but into the nearest section

of lower ground were the slope dipped and the tree cover thickened enough to break the line of sight from above. I slid off the edge of the road and into a shallow embankment, using the incline to control my descent so I didn't lose footing on the way down. The sound followed. It passed over the road above me, moving along the same path I'd been on seconds earlier, and continued across the ridge without stopping or turning back. I stayed undercover. That's the only reason it didn't change direction. From where I was positioned, I could hear it move through the open area above. The tone stretching and compressing as it rotated those structures on its head, scanning or projecting, in a way I couldn't fully interpret. It didn't break trees as it moved,

and it didn't produce the kind of ground impact that would match its size. The only consistent output was the sound, and that was enough to dominate the entire area. while it passed through. After it cleared the ridge, the wood stayed still for several seconds before normal movement started to return. Wind picked up again. Bird started. Branches shifted. Background noise came back in layers instead of all at once. I waited longer than necessary before moving, making sure I wasn't stepping back into open ground while it was still within range of whatever detection method it was using. When I finally climbed back up to the road, there was no trace of it.

No damage, no clear sign of passage, nothing that would confirm what I had just seen to someone who wasn't there. About 50 yards ahead, I found where someone else had stopped. There were marks on the ground where a person had stood for a period of time, facing uphill toward the ridge instead of moving for cover. There were no tracks leading away from that spot. Rule 4. Never stand near the river after midnight.

I didn't take the river reports seriously enough at first. Most of what I was dealing with was happening on land, and it's easy to push anything tied to water down the priority list until you have time to deal with it properly. That changed after I started looking into a case, involving a family that had gone missing near a stretch of shore. shoreline with old docks and broken access points that hadn't been maintained in years. Their vehicle was found at the top of the path intact, no signs of panic, and no indication

they left in a hurry. Search and rescue had already been through the area, and while they didn't say much, I was able to confirm they saw something in the water during the night search. No one would describe it, and no one wanted to put it on record, which told me enough. to take it seriously. I'd also heard a guy mentioned something a few days earlier. He talked about a summer camp incident somewhere, where a kid had nearly been pulled into the water late at night after getting too close to the edge. He didn't give details, and he wouldn't talk much more, but I didn't need him.

The pattern was already there. I went down to the shoreline just before dark, and I set up on higher ground near what was left of an old dock, keeping distance. between myself and the water. That part matters a lot. You don't get close. You don't test it. You don't assume you have time to react if something moves.

By the time it was fully dark, the water had gone completely still. And then I saw movement under the surface. Not clearly defined. Not something you can track cleanly. Just shapes shifting beneath a waterline in a way that didn't make. match current or debris. They moved slowly at first, staying just deep enough that you couldn't make out anything solid, and then rising slightly before slipping back down again.

I didn't move closer. A few seconds later, something broke the surface, not fully, just its head. It was pale, old, and gone almost as quickly as it appeared. another. Further down the line, same movement, same timing, like they were testing distance without committing to anything yet. And that's when I stepped back, slow and controlled no sudden movement. The shapes followed along the edge, staying just beneath the surface, matching my position without coming fully out. I kept moving up the path the same way, increasing distance without giving them a reason to rush. It didn't stop until I reached open ground where the water was no longer

within reach. They didn't follow them. They stayed in it. That's the part that matters. They don't need to chase you. They don't need to leave the water completely. If you're close enough to the edge, they're already within range to grab you. That's what happened to the family. That's what almost happened at the camp, I think. And that's why the rule is simple. You stay away from the water after midnight. Not close, not near, not even for a second. Because if you're standing there long enough to see them, you're already closer than you should be. Rule five, if you see nine lights in the sky come together, get as far away as possible. This rule didn't come from watching something at a distance and putting it together afterward.

It came from a stretch of incidents over the past year that didn't line up until I stopped treating them as separate cases and started tracking what was happening above them at the same time. Early spring, a hiker went missing along a ridge trail that had already been searched twice, and both times the teams came back with nothing that explained where he went. The ground showed broken branches and partial tracks that didn't matter. a single pattern, and the timeline didn't hold together cleanlight. A couple of people in the area mentioned seeing lights over the hills the night before, but nobody wrote that down because it didn't connect to anything they could prove.

A few weeks later, a driver left his vehicle running on a back road near the river and disappeared without a trace. The area around the car showed overlapping movement, not one clear set of tracks, but several. crossing and cutting through each other in ways that didn't make sense. Someone nearby reported hearing a strange siren earlier that night, but again it didn't make it into anything official. By midsummer, the pattern got harder to ignore. People camping near the woods reported multiple things moving at once, something large in the trees, something low near the ground and something in the distance that didn't line up with either. That same night, several people

along the river reported lights drifting in from the New Jersey side, holding position over the water before moving inland. Individually, those reports don't hold up. Together they do, because the timing overlaps too cleanly. Once I started tracking the lights alongside the ground incidents. I realized they weren't background noise. They were the one consistent element showing up before everything else went wrong. That's what led me back out to higher ground one night, watching the same stretch of hills where multiple cases had started to cluster. The sky was clear, and visibility was good enough to track movement without interference. I picked them up within a a few minutes, nine separate points of light, spaced out across the sky above the ridge line,

holding position without drifting or blinking like standard aircraft. There was no sound, no pattern I could map to anything conventional, just nine fixed points sitting where they shouldn't be. And then they started moving, not slowly, not randomly, but with clean, controlled motion that brought them toward each other at the same time. No hesitation, no adjustment, just a direct convergence toward a central point until all nine formed a tight cluster above the hills. That's when I saw the people. They were down below near a turnout that overlooked the slope leading down the river. Four of them standing near their vehicles, all facing the same direction, all looking up at the lights without moving.

From the distance I was at, I could tell something was wrong immediately, not because of what they were seeing, but because of what they weren't doing. Nobody was talking. No one was moving. They were just standing there fixed on the sky. I moved, fast but controlled,

keeping my footing clean as I came down off the higher ground and I cut across the slope, toward him. The lights held position overhead, and as I closed distance, I could feel the same pressure I'd run into before, the kind that narrows your focus and keeps your attention locked on one thing, even when you know you should be doing something else. That's what it does. It holds you there. By the time I reached the turnout, they hadn't moved. Up close, it was worse. Their eyes were fixed upward. They weren't blinking. With a kind of stillness you don't see, unless something has overridden the normal response

to movement, sound, or external input. One of them had taken a step forward without realizing it, edging closer to the drop-off that led down toward the tree line. I didn't waste time trying to explain anything. I grabbed the closest one by the shoulder and I turned him away from the sky, hard enough to break his line of sight. He resisted for a second, not aggressively, just to be able to. enough to show that whatever had his attention, it wasn't letting go easy.

I forced him to look down, and then I pushed him back toward the vehicle behind him. Don't look at it. Get in the car, I said. The others didn't react immediately. That's one of the problems. You don't snap out of it on your own. I moved to the next one, and I did the same thing. Grab, turn, break the line of sight, force attention back to something grounded and close. As soon as he looked away, the tension in his posture shifted, and he started moving again, not fully aware of what had just happened, but responsive enough to follow direction.

Keys, I began. Now, start the engine. One of them fumbled for his pocket, still half looking upward, and I had to physically block his view to keep him from looking back onto the lights, Once the engine turned over, the sound seemed to help, something real, something immediate, something that cut through whatever was holding them in place. The lights above shifted slightly, not spreading out or disappearing, just adjusting position in a way that made it clear they were still active.

At the same time, I heard movement in the trees below the turnout, heavy, fast, and not coming from a single direction. That's what happens when those lights cluster. I got the last two into the vehicle, and I shut the door. Drive, I said. Don't stop. Do not look back. And they didn't argue. They didn't ask questions.

They just moved. I stayed long enough to make sure they cleared the road. Then I pulled back myself, keeping distance between me and the turnout. By the time I reached higher ground again, the lights had started to see. separate. One by one, they broke formation and moved back out, returning to the positions they had held before the cluster. And within a minute, they were gone. Now most people don't believe in any of this, and I don't blame them. The world works better when everything has a clear explanation, when the things you hear at night come from something you can point to, and when the

The stories you hear don't line up too cleanly to be real. It's easier to live that way, and most people never have a reason to question it. But the things I've seen, they don't disappear just because they don't fit. They're out there. Moving through places most people don't spend time in, crossing paths, and ways that don't always stay contained. They don't follow the same rules as anything you're used to, and they don't have need to be understood to be very dangerous. All they need is the right situation and someone in the wrong place who doesn't know what they're looking at. And that's where the rules come in.

Not because they explain everything and not because they make it easier, but because they give you something to hold on to when something else stops making sense. You don't need to understand everything that's out there. You just need to survive it.