“To be on a quest is nothing more or less than to become an asker of questions.” ~Sam Keen
If a raindrop were to ponder her existence, would in life she tremble with fear? For, at the very moment she is birthed, so begins her downward demise.
Miles above her final resting place, she is conceived by moisture and air. She leaves the sky as her womb, born unto descent, as one of many who embark together upon a similar, downward spiral.
What irony that her very conception spells her downfall, which in turn spells her definite end. Yet, were it not for the certainty of her fall would the life of a raindrop ever be possible.
Barriers of the Mind
While a raindrop does not ponder its existence or the meaning or purpose of its life, in as little as asking a most simple question, “If,” do we as humans–deeply emotional, sometimes intelligent, highly complex creatures–open doors of our minds that might otherwise remained closed.
Opening these obstructions of the mind can reveal to us an endless amount about ourselves, about others, and about our world. In doing so, we truly enable ourselves to learn and grow. To open one’s mind is to challenge the status quo of logic and our oft stubborn human nature for the betterment of our inner development. And yet, for all the end value of such efforts, opening rigid doors of the mind is a tiresome and arduous task.
The tragedy is not our unwillingness to open barriers of the mind, but merely that we often haven’t the keys to do so. When we rethink what has already been thought, question the commonplace, and consider something ordinary in an extraordinary way, we allow ourselves to reconsider everything that we thought we already knew. Truly, in as little as asking simple questions like “if,” “why,” or “why not” do we grind the sometimes stubborn nature of our human minds as a locksmith does to misshapen metal and forge keys to new discoveries.
Asking Questions Can Help Forge the Keys
The simple act of posing questions–even questions that seem backward or contradictory at their inception–possesses the unique ability to forge invaluable keys to open doors of the mind that would have otherwise remained locked and shut. Answers are what resolves the unknown of questions. But, so too can questions inspire their own answers.
We ask such questions in spite of what logic and convention dictate. While even the most backward of questions and contradictory of theories may–at their inception–appear to be nothing but nonsense, had humankind not asked so many questions, created so many keys, and opened so many locked doors, we’d have never collectively progressed through history’s hotel: a series of winding, dark halls and rooms of close-mindedness, from what was the past and to this moment, today.
We forge keys on behalf of a better today and on behalf of a better tomorrow. We ask such questions because that which at first may sound utterly backward could reveal to us more than we initially thought imaginable. After all, the life and death of a raindrop is not much unlike the journey of human life.