Q & A

This morning as I prepared to shave and shower my dad poked his head into the bathroom and asked if I could just delay that a moment and go clean his car. And it wasn't really a multiple choice question. In fact it wasn't a question at all - just a veiled instruction. These sort of 'questions' are fairly common in our day to day conversation; we use them as a softening device. It's a bit of a bad habit, because we can eventually forget what questions are for: finding things out. All children know this - they ask questions to learn, to enlarge their view of the world, to gain that which they did not have. But as we get older we're introduced to the rhetorical question; an inquiry that does not seek a reply. For many that's as far as it goes, and they are fortunate. Because the degrading of the Question doesn't stop there. If one becomes sophisticated, perhaps having gone to university or some other place where thinking is worshipped, there comes a stage where one may ask questions not to learn or to command - but merely for the sake of asking. These people consider it enlightened to inquire and to ponder enigmas, but not to learn the anwers. Oh no, it would be arrogant to assume that one person could discover an objective solution. That would be monopolising the truth. Even to seek for an answer would be to conclude that you were able to get it 'right'. And that's unthinkable. So they go on philosophising and 'asking' the great questions of life, but not only are they not looking for an end to their search - they are in fact actively 'unseeking' it. One day however the Answer will find us all - and the Question will be: were you ready?