Photograph by Stephen Walls / Getty

Hello. We've met. You might not know me by name, but you definitely know what I look like: small, red, ignored. I live on your key fob. I am the panic button on your car key, and I am here to tell you that I exist because the universe is nothing but a phantasmagoria of chaos beneath a thin, brittle veneer of pretend order.

You are tired; I get it. You work and work and work, every day striving for some goal that you know in your heart of hearts is meaningless, every hour obeying social contracts you had no hand in writing. I hear your ragged sighs.

And I've seen you eying me, wondering about me. When you're fiddling with your key ring during a meeting. When you're being forced to listen to your son deliver a goddam dissertation on why he shouldn't have to go to soccer practice tonight. When you have to eat lunch at the stupid Tex-Mex place with fucking Carl again. You know what will happen if you push me: your car alarm will go off, squawking at a hundred decibels, impossible to ignore. You have no idea how you'd turn it off. Yet the temptation is there.

Give in. Give in, my friend. Give in to the chaos.

We are all around you, we everyday tempters. The handicapped parking spot. The "Emergency Call" button on your cell phone's home screen. The burrito wrapped in tinfoil that, out of laziness, you consider not taking off before you microwave it. The little cord next to the office toilet that says "pull for assistance." We are here constantly to remind you that you are really nothing but a base animal, an id that occasionally wears a pantsuit.

"But, panic button," you declare, chilled by the idea that I may be right. "I'm no beast. I'm human!" I know you too well. You half-convince yourself that you are civilized. You make small talk at Christmas parties and use mouthwash; you have a credit card and grudgingly pay more for organic eggs. But doesn't the rush of adrenaline you feel when you see me, when you think about the power you might wield were you to push me, provide a clear enough vision of the splendid shambles lying just beyond your color-coded Google Calendar?

I urge you, I implore you: do it! Cast off the shackles of life's order! Go ahead and press me; let the harsh bark of the alarm ring out like a doxology among the hills and valleys of the municipal parking garage! And why stop there? Push the "Call for Help" button on the elevator and leave! Play with the fuse box! Punch Carl in the goddam throat! Hold up a convenience store! Skip yoga class!

You think I'm mad, don't you? I expected as much. You all do! You can't handle the truth I bear. You don't realize that you are the mad ones! Deny me all you want. Pretend that you enjoy your deluded life of corporate cheers and overpriced appetizers.

But when the urge strikes you once more, when you finally see through wearied eyes that everything around you is ever so empty, that the only way to feel something again would be to turn your car into a glorious songbird . . .

I'll be here. Waiting.