We view and treat our questions as an irritation, it bothers us. We have learned that almost anything has got a remedy. An irritation on the skin has got a cream or an ointment that will ease and cool the irritation. We are brought up in a way that everything which bothers us has a solution.
Thirst is there for water, and sexual urge is for sexual intercourse, and long hair are there for the barber.
And in the same way: questions are there for answers. You have got a question, we will find an answer for your question.
The thought of remaining with unsolved question, and answerless question – is almost unbearable for us, after all, what are questions for, if not for answers?
So far so good. Order is present in the world; answers are made for questions, you have a question, go and look for the answer (Wikipedia). The scientific pioneers of the world are working on the next answer.
So far, is what is acceptable as far as answers are concerned; all is well, we never had so many answers.
So if it is so good, how come it is not so good??
Well, first of all, we hardly have any questions at all; dry land, and those with even some questions, are perceived as disturbing, bothering and as those who are under educated or as ones who could not think for themselves. We don’t like them, and as response, we use the habit of pulling out the first available answer which seat on the tip of our tongue (because we use it so often), just to block and shut the gaping hole of the nagging question.
And in this way we getting rid of this bothering question. It doesn’t really matter if the answer fits or not, what is important is to shut the question up.
We don’t like questions.
We love answers, we collect them, we hoard them, and we drown in them… we have much more answers then questions, questions that we never had and never will have.
When people get together there are those that come out with questions, usually they are less respected than those that always supply the answers, they are looked at as being on a higher status. So, when in company, we learn not to come out with questions, we swallow them, prefer to pull out answers, and so a general conversation becomes to be an exchange of answers, with hardly any questions at all, it is a competitions, in which the smartest answer wins…
We go out of University armed with millions of answers, to questions that never crossed our mind.
So the problem is never a shortage in answers, we have too much, the problem is in the many questions we never ask and never dream to ask.
Curiosity, thirst to know, hunger to understand, confusion, uncertainty, not knowing – are not burning in us, we are too full with the ‘liquid’ of too many unnecessary answer, ‘liquid’ which shuts down the burning of the little questions which are still burning on low fire inside.
Question are the hole in the tooth that the dentist is filing up with the ‘answer’ of the tooth filling. But he never fills up the hole that he finds, what he does, funnily enough, is to enlarge the hole before filling. The hole is the question, the filling is the answer. Without enlarging the question the magnitude of the answer cannot fit in.
Without a wide and deep question – there is no point looking for an answer.
We concentrate on the answer, forgetting the question, feeling like we are in a supermarket, we can choose the most attractive answer. Usually, we don’t choose the most fitting answer but the most instant, ready, and the one which is used most frequently (on the tip of our tongue, available).
Knowing more will not make us wise, collecting multitude of facts that do not belong to anything, only makes us ‘fat’, heavy, knowing a lot about nothing that has meaning for us, because it has got nothing to do with anything we want to know.
Wisdom comes by being focused on what we don’t know, on our stupidity and confusion, this is the only true and real state of the human in the universe, and the only way out of this state is to be based in questions. True, it is uncomfortable, but if we do – something miraculous will happen; being based in the question creates a kind of vacuum that will suck in the appropriate answer, yes, ‘suck in’. The true answer cannot be drawn from one’s history and experience, because this is already a food that was eaten, the answer must be fresh, and for that it should be received from the outside, like inspiration, high knowing etc.
The answer should land upon the powerful & insistent question like an airplane landing on the landing field of the question.
We have to make a big shift; from being based and addicted to answers – to being based and located in questions, and questions only.
Conclusion A: instead of looking for answers– enlarge and deepen the questions.
Conclusion B: be based in what you don’t know, not in what you already know.
G. R.
Gabriel