Asking questions is an essential quality of a healthy mind. Children ask questions constantly, not, it would seem, to know things so much as to be a part of things. What those around them have and share, they want as well.
For similar reasons we often question not in negation, but rather in wanting to absorb properly what is set before us. I hear a tapping noise outside the house. What is it? I go outside and see. And there it is, a bird digging into a tree, or a laborer hammering a post in the distance, or an old truck coughing and rattling down the road. So there is the source of the sound. The question is answered, the curiosity satisfied.
This experience of having something unknown become in quick succession something known is as common as breathing, perhaps even an aspect of the same process. What is unclear, startling, unexplained becomes, with a few moments of attention, something comprehended, known, a part of our daily world.
Admittedly the process frequently runs on automatic. We rise from sleep and emerge into a day where for the most part we know what is around us and what we are experiencing. When uncertain impressions or events appear, we make sense of them as quickly as we can. Nothing wrong with that. But it comes about sometimes that we feel our world to be too familiar, too “known.” Having the little answers to the little questions is no fun. And sometimes it feels much worse than that, like some sort of trap or prison. Then this fact, this experience, becomes a question. Sometimes a big, life-changing question. What is to be done? Either nothing, and have faith that all is well, or will be well; or change—change something in one’s life. Change oneself.
This happens to many of us. Somewhere out there a brick wall was waiting for us, and one day we finally run into it. The wall may be a traumatic or ecstatic event, something that shattered irreversibly through joy or pain the flow of our current life. Often though it is not like this. The wall is inconspicuous, we may not even know when we ran into it. But at a certain point the buildup was too great, everything changed, and suddenly we no longer have the life we thought we had. And we know we cannot go on as we were.
Then a question grows inside. What to do? Where to go? Shall I read something new? Shall I get married, or divorced? Pack up and move? These are all fair questions, and the specifics always matter to each individual, and to no one else. The modern age is filled with “how-tos” for the many unanswered questions we have. If I find the right “how-to,” then I will know how to address my question.
Wait a moment. Here is that automatic process again. Here I am walking outside to verify that tapping noise. After whatever cataclysm, internal or otherwise, that came upon me, is this what I want to resolve it all? Was I only looking for a prescription?
Let us back up a little. We proposed that our “known” world sometimes starts to feel like a prison. If we accept this as true, at least once in a while, then we are implying something else. We are implying that the unknown is freedom, a liberation from something. A liberation from our prison of the known.
The unknown as freedom, as something that is somehow superior to the known. What does this mean? If someone asks me what time it is, and I act like I don’t know, even if I do, is that “freedom”? If there are strange noises everywhere in my environment, do I now start ignoring them? Well there we are looking for the known again. We know this is not the way, but it is not so easy to know what is the way. Curiously this phenomenon of the unknown acquires its own special context. It becomes something that we need to study on its own terms. Something that we need to live with and grow into.
For one thing we made a tacit assumption about what occurs when we hit the brick wall. We assumed that what followed were questions. But the brick wall is not just a question. It is an answer. This is often where we underestimate life, and underestimate ourselves. We have an answer right where we want it, right between our eyes and within our hearts. Real answers are not sugar-coated. And they lead to questions, hopefully real questions. But they make us stop and see something. We need not give it a name; we certainly should not try to “cure” it and make it go away. We need above all to let it teach us.
This is where the unknown can grow. Let us not be too quick with the next question. Let us live and breathe our unexpected friend of an answer. Life has changed. I have changed. I do not know what I am doing. These may be facts for us at certain moments in our lives. They are not necessarily problems.
These considerations of the “unknown” then revolve around two premises. One is that the unknown is often an answer, not a question. And, the unknown always, always, concerns oneself. Nothing is more known and unknown to us than ourselves.
Here I am again walking outside to find the source of that tapping noise. This time I am not so interested in the noise, or the bird or person behind it. I am more interested in this person walking outside. The crisp air is a surprise, the thoughts I had a moment ago have vanished (what was I thinking anyway…). The impression that reveals the culprit quickly appeases the curiosity. But I am still standing here, still regarding that impression. The impression continues, the tapping noise continues, I am still here looking and listening. Is that all that is occurring just now? No, of course not. Life goes on all around me. Do I know in detail everything that is occurring around me? No, I do not. My automatic process of making sense of things continues; this we cannot stop. But I know full well that I do not know in all details, in most details, what is going on around me. It is really a mystery, really something unknown. And let’s face it, in most cases I will never know. All of these impressions and sounds and sensations, I do not know where they come from or what they mean. But I am here, receiving them. I am present to them, at least for a few moments.
And who knows, maybe I heard the noise and walked outside the house for a completely different reason than to satisfy a curiosity. Perhaps I did it just to be aware of myself. Maybe this is what my Self wanted. How often is it that the charm of not knowing brings one to the experience of one’s own awareness, of knowing oneself a little more deeply, if for however brief an instant.
Beware of questions that do not want an answer. Beware of answers that mask the real answer. Appreciate answers that do not need a question.
The answer will always be who we are—the presence of who we are.
