Question

Today's painting is a question. I'll bet you can't guess what the question is though...

Life is full of questions if you only look for them. I spend a good deal of time seeking out questions and then trying to answer them. Semper interrogat omnia. I think it makes for a good family motto. As a younger parent it was easier to indulge the many whys children ask. With the whiteboard nearby I was often ready to do a deep dive into a subject; the whiteboard got misplaced somewhere during the last move.

It's the question that drives us. Children naturally do root cause analysis with the "five whys" they teach in business class: keeping asking "why" to each "answer" and eventually you'll get to the root cause of a failure. It's kind of sad this has to be taught because children are so often untaught it! How many parents and adults have become exasperated at children repeatedly asking why to probe for deeper understanding? I know I have been guilty of this on more that one occasion.

The flip side of this is the zen buddhist idea of unasking questions. Often times the questions we ask are more complex than a simple "why" and they themselves contain to much misunderstanding in their framing to elucidate a truth in their answering. These are the sort of questions that should be unasked; when they are the questions that drive us we are often driven the wrong way down cul-de-sacs of foolishness. Douglas Hofstadter introduced me to this concept years ago in GEB.

So I'll keep asking and unasking, interating toward a better understanding of reality, and I hope you do too!