What is the Question?

When we were children we constantly asked our parents questions. Why is the sky blue? What makes popcorn pop? Where do babies come from? And on and on and on and on… Sometimes we were happy with the answers, sometimes we were not. But in either case you can be sure that more questions would follow. Not only was this questioning crucial for us but it was also thrilling! We discovered and entered new worlds! The more we understood the more questions we had, and the more wonder we experienced.

There was a deep desire to understand! An uncontrollable urge to make sense of it all! It would be completely futile to ask a child to stop being curious, to stop wanting to understand. It just won’t happen. Every new experience is the cause for a hundred new questions. And every answer sparks a hundred more. This desire comes from the very core of the child. It is not like the satisfaction an old man gets when he completes the crossword or when he finally gets all the cards up in solitaire. Unlike the old man the child is not deciding to do this. He is not doing it to fill some time. It is not a hobby or an interest of the child. It is the child!

As we grow we understand the world more and more. Things make more sense. We have explored the trees, observed seeds sprout, we have seen the water babble in the stream and watched those little creatures crawling amongst the pebbles. We have seen so much and wondered so much! But something changed, we stop asking questions! We seem to have moved on. The desire to play in the puddle and to feel mud between our toes lessens.  And we are sad, and we do crosswords and play solitaire to fill the time.

But what has changed? Why do we content ourselves with the mundane? Are our hearts not still longing for answers? Do we not still have the desire to discover new worlds? Do we not ache to understand? Maybe the problem is not that we gave up on looking for answers but that we do not know the right questions to ask?