The very fact that the question has arisen is a great achievement. Thinking about it is valuable in itself. And the answer? It seems to me that sometimes it is even harmful to have it.
Why? First, when a person asks a question, especially to himself, it does not necessarily mean that he is eager to receive an answer right away. He may not even expect to hear it. He just needs to think. Secondly, the answer to a question can be hasty, ill-conceived, sometimes it can even lead us down the wrong path. And then a person lives with an answer in his tongue and a lie in his heart. A quick answer seems like it should immediately relieve a headache. In fact, most often it is akin to a placebo: either the question didn’t really bother you, or it’s a temporary sedation.
Pass the tests
- What are you most devoted to?
I was always somewhat embarrassed by clear and quick answers to questions. First, there are no universal answers. In addition, sometimes it seems that a person simply did not have time to think, weigh, understand. He did not think, but answered superficially, guided by stereotypes and “grandfather’s recipes.” Although, it happens that the answer lies so deep that the question is not needed – a person knows something from the very beginning.
The kinship of people is in questions, not in answers. Karass (a community of close people according to Vonnegut) is created, rather, on the same questions, and not on similar answers. The answers can and should be different. But the question unites. Imagine that you ask a person, for example, how he feels about this or that event. But he never thought about it and never intends to. What will you do with such a person, how to communicate? Communication will fail. And he will immediately fall out or never enter your inner circle. Unlike the one who knows the question, who cares about it. If there is indifference to the question, then there is a chance to be understood.
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- Ask yourself questions
The very appearance of a question means that we are capable of reflection. It is clear that this is not a question to the wife: “Where did you put my favorite T-shirt?” And something else that affects genuine interest is directly related to experiences.
It is believed that excessive reflection is depressing. The “intellectual psyche” does not stand up, a person does not want to delve into himself and the world, he is afraid to destroy the usual protective frame. In fact, reflection, asking yourself questions, is an antidepressant. Like bitter chocolate. And not only because something finally explains and thereby removes the neurosis of uncertainty and calms. But because in itself mental activity, reflection, balances the psyche and maintains the intellectual form.
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- Joint life: 5 questions before the start
Someone said about the past century that he rejected the answers, but left the questions. The answers will be tested many times over by life, the questions, apparently, will remain eternal.
And we will continue to think about them all our lives. Sometimes, as if finding answers, then denying or correcting them. In the end, perhaps, following Socrates, we will say that we don’t know anything. And if we pass on something, it is not our answers, but our questions.