WoTD: arcanum

definition:

1. A secret, a mystery.

2. Specialised or mysterious knowledge, language, or information that is not accessible to the average person (generally used in the plural).

Pop once said that the secret of life lay not in the living of it, but in the study of those who came before. He lived that advice, reading volume after volume of historical text in preference to stepping out to live his own. I long thought he did it because he could not walk, but then I saw him hurry down his back steps to shoo the neighbour's cat from out of the yard. Then I figured he did it because he feared life beyond the safety of his front gate, until I happened across him at the local library, chattering away to the librarian as though he had known her his whole life. In the later years he hosted clandestine meetings in his basement for men who wore dark clothes and carried dusty old tomes. I wondered if he were a cult leader, but what kind of cult would my grandfather lead?
As I grew into adolescence and my grandfather into old age, I wearied of trying to figure him out. He was an arcanum and I lacked sufficient wisdom and persistance to figure him out.