You don’t need more answers
You need more questions
Within the realm of life lies the concept of questions and answers. One constitutes the other, creating this interwoven entity called knowledge, that apparently we seek too often.
An entity that changed societies and civilizations for thousands of years, leading them to their flourishing, and their fall.
How can we get that entity?
Answers.
That’s how it’s done, right?
We long for a vast set of answers to govern us and guide us toward that which we seek and pursue. It might be a dream, it might be a life, it might be a person.
Whatever we seek might happen only when we gather the right set of answers.
But how can we get answers?
By asking questions.
Thus it’s a simple cycle, questions lead to answers and so does the opposite. The more questions one asks, the more answers one can get.
It’s that uncomplicated.
Yet, I can’t stop myself from extensively wondering about this bemusing question.
Should we ask more questions to get more answers, or should we get more answers to ask more questions?
Somehow, this itself is a question AND an answer, which leaves me thinking about it.
Perhaps there is more to this.
Perhaps there is more…
To further decipher the true meaning behind that question, I’ll try and give you a real-life example that many of us have gone through.
Depression…
When someone is depressed, they usually have a nihilistic approach by which they live. They consider that life has no meaning, and there is no meaning to live since it does. It’s a simple syllogism.
But what is truly happening from another perspective? The Q&A perspective that I’m talking about?
Before they were depressed, they had either a conscious or subconscious answer to the question “Is life worth living?”, and if they were happy and joyful, that answer was yes.
But after sliding through life, that answer changed. Why? Because they asked another question “Does my life make any sense?”, and their answer changed.
Why?
Because they asked another question, to get another answer.
This is often the case with depression, we live in joy for some time until we get to a challenging situation, that changes our complete perspective on life and other things. That perspective is simply a Q&A that changed.
The good thing about this is that you can get depressed because you answered the question in a certain way. You can get happy and at peace with yourself the same way, you only need a different answer that is going to make sense.
How?
Again, with questions.
It’s been almost 5 years since I first thought about this, and back then, I had a certain feeling about the true power of this, but I only and truly fathomed that power today, 5 years later.
Now, it makes total sense to me to ask more questions, instead of answers. Because I too, like all of us, have been living with a predefined and static answer. I didn’t try to change it until the misfortunes decided to do so.
Only then, have I realized the true meaning behind asking questions.
Why would I live with only ONE answer to ONE question?
Does life make sense? Yes.
Does life make no sense? Also yes.
Can I live with both answers while keeping my sanity and living my best life? A BIG yes.
This is what I mean by not needing more answers. Because answers are not reliable if you dare to think about it.
You might think the closest person to you can not betray you, that’s the answer to “Can they betray me?”.
But if life decides otherwise, you’ll change your answer very soon to the popular “I don’t trust anyone no more”.
But if you invest your time to ask “It’s part of human nature. Thus, how can I accept my closest person to betray me?”, it’ll make your life much more bearable and surely much more enjoyable. Because you no longer have a definite answer,
Another example is also the well-known societal practice of judging.
Judging is merely to answer the question “Who is that person and what do I think of them”.
But when you rely more on answers, you allow yourself to truly know that person, and oftentimes, your impression has little correlation to who that person is.
If you choose this philosophy as an approach to life, it makes all the sense to not judge others, because you simply ask more questions about others and what they might be.
Although, it’s part of our human nature, and especially our brain to find patterns and shortcuts. After all, it’s trying to make our lives better by giving us an answer to everything in the shortest time possible. Which is extremely useful in some instances, but for the majority of your life, you must leave room for change, for new answers and new perspectives.
Otherwise, you’ll struggle more because life itself changes second by second.
That’s a sign of maturity and wisdom because if you look at the great people, they all adopt this mindset in some way. They don’t simply accept one answer and live with it, they try and try every time to ask new questions “How can I do that?” “Is that a good strategy” “Is this my true purpose?”.
They are never satiated with only one answer as long as they can get more by asking more questions.
Paradoxially, questions are the real answers…
That’s it!
I hope you like this article. It was very enjoyable to write because I thought about this a long while ago and I decided to write about it because somehow it made me a better person, which is what I hope you become by reading my articles.
So, if you have any ideas or thoughts about this I would be glad to hear them in the comments.
See you in the next one :)
