I’ve got questions. I want to know why things are the way they are. I want to figure out what happened to us. When did everyone get so busy being busy? Why does a person have to work his entire life to pay for his home? For a place to live, stay warm, and cook his meals. Why does it have to be this way? Why is every piece of land in the world owned by someone or something, when there is room for everyone to have a piece of it or to share it?
Why is it that in this world of technology, that people are starving? Why do we still drive vehicles that belch poisons into the air, when perfectly acceptable alternatives are available? Why are people so greedy and short-sighted?
Why is it that every religion thinks they have the truth, and that no one else can be right? Why is it that science and religion are at odds? What is the difference between an alien and an angel? What makes you righteous and me evil, or vice versa? Why is it that the way to salvation is narrow but the road to destruction is wide? When I look around, I see that most people are beautiful, and caring. I also look around and I see that there are a few very evil people in the world. So that road size doesn’t seem to match the traffic pattern.
It irks me when people say things like there is no afterlife, or science proves this, or science proves that. Or, anyone who does this is going to hell. Everyone needs to search for the truth because the real truth is YOU DON”T KNOW. Yes, that’s right. You don’t know and no one should be telling you that they do, because they absolutely cannot. I don’t care how smart you are, or if you feel that the hand of God rests on you, that you’ve discovered the One Truth and that means that you need to force everyone else to do what you think is right. It’s great that happened to you, that you had that experience, that your calculations have led you to that. Question it, examine it, share it, enjoy it, follow it, but don’t assume that one size fits all.
Yeah, I got a few thousand of those questions. But that’s okay, because you need to ask questions when things don’t look right. You have to suspect things. You have to wonder why. You need to investigate. You need to check your thinking. Because nothing is worse than following something blindly without understanding why you are doing so.
The world has done this. People followed the Nazi’s, went along with the Inquisition, burned people at the stake for being witches. You know there were people with questions, but they were afraid to ask, or they were too busy working and living. They would have to go out of their way to say, “Hey, what if that lady is just different from us?” Or, “Maybe you got this all wrong?” Or, “Perhaps you’re jumping to conclusions here.”
Ask questions. My son is full of them. He questions everything I do: everything I ask him to do, every task, every way of doing something, every firmly held belief that I have. And I love him for that. Yes, it’s annoying. Yes, sometimes I feel that genetically embedded desire to say, “Because I said so!” But I don’t do that. Because that’s not the kind of person I want him to be. I don’t want to raise a lemming. When something looks wrong to you, look up, look around, test it out, and if it smells fishy, sound the alarms.