Questions & Answers...

Folk #1: Asking questions. Looking for answers. Trying to figure things out. Trying to solve the Riddles, large & small, of Existence. It's a life-long quest. I have spent so much of my time on the planet occupied with this Don Quixote-like quest. Questioning everything. Battling windmills, battling the wind. What engages me? Whatever engages me.  Pretty much anything. Still, fairly quickly, I have learned there are hard limits to knowledge, to my search for knowledge, and any sense of "understanding." Often I find myself lost in a cul de sac, or in a hall of mirrors; a confounding zone where the questions multiply, they bounce around, they collide with each other; knowledge slowly accumulates, but solid & clear answers refuse to offer themselves up. Life; it's complicated. Seems that the more you look, the more see, often the less you know, the less certainty, the more you explore a subject, any subject, the murkier things get when you delve deep enough into the dark nougat center. You end up with lots of knowledge, often contadictory, partial, arbitary. Understanding is a fleeting chimera, always vanishing Unicorn. Of course, silly me, I am not the greatest questioner. My limits are oh so obvious. Even, & especially, to me. Being fully Human demands a disciplined self-awareness & a hard-won, humility. There is Mystery everywhere. Yes. We are bound by Mystery. Or maybe bound & gagged by Mystery. I suppose that's ok, or, you know, it has to be ok, one learns to live with the limits of knowledge, the limits of understanding, and the all-pervading reality of a nebulous Mystery. Making sense, by not making sense. There is a vast Cloud of Unknowing looming over us all. When you are at your wit's end, grasping, grappling, fumbling for answers, an all-purpose, very handy response comes to mind. Take a question, any question, one that starts with a simple, "Why...?" Ha.  Aye. Right?  Tricky. There's the rub. You may come up with million plausible-sounding reasons. Still, the cold, hard, funny & obvious response would be, could be, often is: "Who knows? I mean, you know, shit happens."