Our Quest to Question
Surely you wouldn't want all the answers now, would you? Your mind would quit functioning. Can you imagine living day in and day out without having any questions? Sure that might sound really good when your mind has given you more than you wanted, but after two days, maybe three, with no questions at all..? Impossible! It just wouldn't be hu'man... that's what we are more than anything else - question and answer machines.Everything in our lives poses questions. Think about that and watch the questions that follow: "What does he mean?" ... "I think I can survive just fine without questions, can't I?" ... "What about all the love I have for my family and friends... do I question that?"...
And don't forget our entertainment - stories that present questions that require answers to fulfill the story's conclusion. Even essays that deal in propositions and theories, the tomes on mathematics and economics, all the books on history... all of them in one way or another pose questions... even our holy books, those sacred texts that invite questions as to the larger questions in life.
Without questions rattling around in our minds we are either asleep, in deep meditation or dead. Since our birth we've been questioning. Watch an infant only days old - s/he looks and looks and looks... even reaches out to touch... they want to know. And how do we know? We ask questions. We may not ask in a formal manner : "Cecil, what do you think of the poetry of Richard Brautigan?" No, I don't ask myself in such a way as that... and I doubt you do, too. But we question without saying so... without verbalizing.
Why in the world do we keep asking questions? I know someone reading this now may ask why I'm even talking about this. The answer would be because I notice not only myself asking questions but the whole inhabited world of hu'manity asks questions. "How's the weather today?" ... "Did you read the paper today?" ... "Did you watch American Idol the other night?" ... "Where did you get those shoes?" ... "I like your car... how long have you had it?"
Questions are the Number One Quest we have... and we must find some kinda answer to move on. Unfortunately, we do allow for some cheap and even wrongful answers when we just don't know, but that is so we can continue playing the question/answer game that we must be genetically predisposed to do.
Sometimes mind just overwhelms us. There are those that become so overwhelmed that all those unanswered questions just keep piling up in the mind like an overflowing desk with papers and the person simply breaks down. Over exhausted and overwhelmed by questions and questions and more questions that there is no more room in the head for anything else. Traumatic experience! Mental breakdown sure to follow... sleep, meditation or death the final solutions.. those three or drugs and/or alcohol. But those last choices are only temporary aids that mask the true problem. Ask those those that have been there.
As I've come to the conclusion many times in my own thinking, we, the human race, are the youngest mammalian, indeed the youngest life form that currently inhabits this singular planet with millions of other much older life forms. And like anything that is young, we are a spirited and energetic species that wants to know. We want to not only know, but fully understand our environment. This is so we can survive and hopefully survive as well as and as long as many of the other life forms on this planet. In order to know and understand... and hopefully to finally fully realize what we are, we are led by our minds insistence in knowing. We can only know by asking. I'm sure you've heard the adage: there's no such thing as a dumb question, only a dumb answer. It was a questioning mind that came up with that adage, and it's a pretty good one... it takes the burden of doubt off some people to take the adage to heart and ask their questions.
Our levels of questioning span the whole of our knowledge - from how to tie our shoe laces to theorizing the origins of the entire universe and beyond. All the knowledge we have so far gained has not quieted the questioning mind one bit. The more answers we arrive at the more questions follow. It's a big universe and it encompasses every question and ever answer we could hope to know... we just don't know it, yet.
cecil
19 abril 2009
Pic of the Week:
Old Rusty
[photo: cecil]
[photo: cecil]
