Questions, Answers

I love hard questions. And I hate hard questions.

I have studied English and I have always been a reader, because many great questions found in literature are unresolvable. Or if they are not unresolvable, they are tangled. Knotty, as one of my professors used to say. (I always had to auto-correct the word in my brain when he said it out loud: Not naughty. Knotty.) It's possible to reach any number of conclusions about these questions. And if you can justify the logical path from the question to the conclusion, then you have made your case. That doesn't mean the story is over (literally or metaphorically). That only means you are one amongst many voices contributing to a dialogue. Changing your mind is allowed. Modifying your original conclusion is par for the course.

Life itself, I would say, is tangled. Knotty. Complicated. Filled with many great questions for which there may well be multiple answers. It seems too easy, too simple for there to be A Meaning of Life. Must it be singular? Can't our lives hold more than one meaning? Navigating through existence seems too much of a mess too often for everything to be simple. And all the questions in the world--in my brain--can't possibly only have One Ultimate Answer.

And still I sometimes find myself wondering if it isn't somehow calming to oversimplify everything. If all roads eventually lead to exactly one destination, all of a sudden, which road I take does not seem to matter so much. It's freeing somehow. But stifling somehow, as well. What if I don't want to be headed where all of the roads are leading?

I suppose this also means: I love easy questions. I hate easy questions.