When I write, I often find myself dropping question marks far more often than I would like. They seem to linger on the end of lines, and at the opening and closing of each entry, hanging like an old telephone off-hook. For a journal – or rather a series of journals reaching back a few years, which I consider to contain a significant portion of my opinions, thoughts, and musings, it seems rather overfull of question marks. Not much to be said or drawn from it if every line is as hesitant as the next. Each uncertainty swings back and forth till its pendular stroke knocks all concrete meanings into the dust.
Yet, a thought remains a thought regardless of whether or not is has an answer. Hollow uncertainties make up a great deal of everyone’s lives. Things which are taken for granted on a daily basis often have fragile foundations. Guesswork and inference are a great deal more crucial than you would first think. And if humanity has yet to find answers to questions it has pondered since its dawn, then why should I imagine myself to hold the answers?
So, this is a book of questions. Every question that marks the page is the first step towards discovery. A hypothesis – a theory. Untested and untried, they lay a little thin and vapid. But as life moves on, as I continue to learn and absorb the world around me, I hope to follow them to their endpoint. I note them on the page as if yelling into the dark mouth of a cave, hoping to hear them echoing as if I had not asked the question myself.
Therefore, if this is a book of questions, I suppose in my life I must search for the answers. Every book I pick up, anticipating to read more about a certain theme, decision, or topic, is but an attempt to find a book of answers. And yet, even those who claim to hold the answers rarely seem to hold them all. And, in their silence on the subjects they choose not to discuss, I am left with more questions than I had set out with, with more questions than I could hope to answer in the span of a single life. However, it would be a shame to not even attempt to quench my thirst, and so I push on, sowing questions like seeds in the loam of my mind.