unstrungstudio

I am very tired. It's 1:15 AM on November 21, and I got up at 6:00 AM on November 20. Nevertheless, I am interested in a particular philosophical question at the moment.

How many people question their questions, and what is the relationship between a question and an answer? I just read a blog entry that focused on a common question, "What am I supposed to do with my life?" In other words, what pursuit will fulfill all of my dreams and desires? This, in my opinion, is an easy question, because there isn't an answer, which naturally calls the question into question. Perhaps, when pondered, the actual question deals with sustaining a sense of happiness for a long period of time. Our needs and desires evolve over time; hence, there is no single pursuit that will make us happy indefinitely. (The former response excludes people who are "easy to please." They never ask themselves the former question.) People who commit to a job or task over a long period of time have to reinvent that job or task repeatedly, and it is through that reinvention that they find happiness. Alternately, they are often miserable, an all too common scenario. If we are to ask ourselves a question about our pursuits, it might be something along the lines of, "What will make me happy into the foreseeable future?" However, that's not the source of my interest in this particular topic.

We ask ourselves questions frequently, and then, we struggle to answer them. However, we rarely reflect upon the validity of the questions. Indeed, if a question isn't valid, it doesn't warrant our time or creativity. Our second question should always be to question the value of of the first. If a question can't realistically be answered, is it valid? If a question's answer leads to another question, did we ask the correct question initially?

If we question our questions and are confident that they are valid, we must analyze the relationship between questions and their answers. My first inclination was to categorize questions and answers as causes and effects, but that might be too simple. In fact, the relationship between a question and an answer might be wholly unique. A question is an unknown, and an answer defines that unknown for us. This can be as simple as selecting a beer, and it can be as complicated as defining the next stage of our life. Additionally, questions are bound by all of the same rules that govern us, primarily time and space. Will x pursuit make me happy? It might make you happy today. In fact, it might make you happy for the next ten years; however, at some point, your returns might diminish.

I had a philosophy professor who plainly said, "There are dumb questions." This is true, even in a world where we sometimes support stupidity in the name of growth. Tangentially, we might also ask ourselves when valid questions might become invalid, because circumstances have changed. I don't have a good answer, but it is an important issue that we should all ponder, whether we are asking ourselves questions about our work or our life. In short, we might all benefit from questioning more of our questions and pondering only those questions that deserve our attention. Time is short, and large questions forever loom in our path. Laboring to answer the "right" questions might mean the difference between happiness and unhappiness.

posted by J.  # 1:21 AM