The Big Questions...

[Barry]

This afternoon my wife told me something about my son. Something he had told her one day when they were talking.
This was after we made love - she came home early from work - and we sat naked on the edge of the bed afterward and talked about literally everything for, like, two hours, our conversation roaming far and wide, hither and yon, up and down and all around. After sixteen years together we actually still do that. Like two people on a first date.
She said he said sometimes when he needs to eat he stands up and gets a headrush, feels lightheaded, and all the sudden questions are in his head. Questions like, "Who am I?" "Why am I here?" "What am I doing?' and "Who is Haley?" (Haley is his girlfriend.)
These are the Big Questions, are they not? Don't we all seek answers to these questions and others? Others like, "What is truth?" and "Who decides?"
Is this not the purpose of being human, the quintessence of the human condition, to at least ask if not answer these questions? For can any answer ever be anything more than entirely subjective? And it seems to me that this is the purpose of the questions. Not to ask or answer them for all, but to ask if not answer them for one: you, yourself, and no one more. It struck me as I listened to my wife after we made love that it's not so much the answering that matters but the asking. That this is what it is to be alive: to ask. And that this is the human condition, as it must surely be the alien condition, the same throughout the space-time continuum, the universal field of consciousness, the Great Mind, that to be alive is to ask the Big Questions. And I was happy to understand this. To simply ask is enough. The answers can wait. The answers I can wait for.
"Nobody wants to die," I told my wife. "But everyone does." "Just like nobody wants to lose, but everyone does at one time or another." "Oddly enough," I said, "I'm not afraid to die." This after she expressed fear for how long I would be with her. Then I said, "No one ever dies. Because always there is someone who remembers them." Even for the most heremtical hermit this is true.
I think the reason I'm not afraid is because of this vague understanding that it's the asking of the Big Questions that matters and not the answering.
The answers will wait for me.
And I can wait for them.

Peace,
Barry
PS: Okay, so I talked about it.

[Yejun]

The questions above can be answered. The problem is that the answers just lead to more questions that pretty much sound the same as these questions.

In a certain sense, I completely agree. The ability to ask these questions are if not the essence (because I don't really know what that means) at least a major part of what it is to be human.

[Barry]

I don't know, dude. Anyone I ever met who thought they had the answers to these questions, subjectively or objectively, even just the first question - who am I? - pretty much came off as an arrogant asshole in the long run, after considered observation of their conduct. And what's more, it appeared their "confidence" in having the answers impelled them to actually do harm to others, all in the others' own best interest, which the answer-havers, of course, thought they knew better than the ones they sought to "help" knew themselves. That's why I say it's the asking that matters, not the answering, because as you alluded to, the answering often produces more confusion, thus harm, than good. But the asking...nothing but good can come from the asking.

Peace,
Barry

[Jacob]

I don't know, dude. Anyone I ever met who thought they had the answers to these questions, subjectively or objectively, even just the first question - who am I? - pretty much came off as an arrogant asshole in the long run, after considered observation of their conduct. And what's more, it appeared their "confidence" in having the answers impelled them to actually do harm to others, all in the others' own best interest, which the answer-havers, of course, thought they knew better than the ones they sought to "help" knew themselves. That's why I say it's the asking that matters, not the answering, because as you alluded to, the answering often produces more confusion, thus harm, than good. But the asking...nothing but good can come from the asking.

Well, people's rhetoric need some work before that's completely true. And some even consider it a sin to ask something which is concrete. Though I do have to admit, there is safety in answering a question with a question.

And as far as we are aware, there are no definite answers, just the perception of what we believe to be correct at this time. What is the "right answer" will always change.

[Barry]

some even consider it a sin to ask something which is concrete.

The above is true, Jacob. But why might that be? Could it be that the "some" would like to keep things just the way they are, preserve the status quo, protect their power-base, do you think? I do. And I also think sin, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder rather than the wearer. And concrete is not near as permanent as its inventers like to think. Compared to stone, concrete doesn't last long at all.

And as far as we are aware, there are no definite answers, just the perception of what we believe to be correct at this time. What is the "right answer" will always change.

Exactly. "Right" not only changes with time, it also is different depending on where one stands, on which "side" and all that. So any answer will always be "wrong" given enough time or depending on who says it and from where.
I saw on the news last night that Osama bin Laden's son may have been killed by US forces. Was this a right or wrong thing to do? Depends on who asks, who is aked and who answers. But in one plain and simple context - a man has outlived his son - it is undeniably a tragedy. The question of "right" or "wrong" becomes moot at this point, but still we must ask. For to not ask is to be inhuman as well as inhumane.

Peace,
Barry