Saturday 2 March 2013

Questions Are The Answers


One attribute that separates a human mind from that of an animal is its ability to think. And, when he thinks, he is faced with many questions, many of which remain unanswered. The real purpose of life is not to get answers to your questions but to ask the right questions. In fact, many a time, we don't need to get the answers- questions become the answers. The quality of a man should be judged by the questions he asks rather than the answers he gives.                                          Man is most curious in his childhood. A child wants to know everything that he sees around & wants to know the reasons of their existence. He gropes for the answers in dark & makes a perception about things around him depending upon the answers he gets. In fact, he starts defining his life around those questions & answers.
"At the end of the day, the questions we ask of ourselves determine the type of people we will become."- Leo Babauta
But by the time he grows up to be a man, his curiosity is suppressed. It happens for two reasons- first, because he doesn't get the right answers and, secondly, because he is not encouraged to ask questions. We forget that all the answers in the world were obtained by asking questions. The fact of the matter is that we are not afraid of questions. We are afraid of answers or lack of these. We are afraid of reality as it may sound shocking, at times. But that doesn't change the reality a bit. It remains the same- shocking. 
So, by not answering we are not changing the reality, we are only changing the state of mind of a child, for the worse. And this is too high a price to pay for our so called balanced approach. The right approach is to encourage the child to remain a child by not suppressing his inquisitiveness. It might happen that he doesn't get all the answers today, but one day he will surely get. 

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