So many questions, so few answers

This is sort of like my Decisions, Decisions post. So I reread it so as not to repeat myself. And I hope I haven't.

There are two ways in which this post came about. Firstly there is the daily question of what to have for dinner - today this is complicated by who is coming to dinner - the grandchildren. They are staying overnight and so coming for dinner. Always a tiny bit tricky to know what to feed them, so my husband, who is a barbecue enthusiast suggested a barbecue. Ok thought I - we can have a couple of sausages and some chicken kebabs - and maybe some nice Greek roast potatoes. And it turns out the question of what's for dinner is one that occupies many. My son rang to find out what was on the menu because he was also thinking of joining us. A barbecue, however, was not the right answer for him. So it's just us and the kids. And then in the supermarket I am asked if I have enough sausages - yes say I - I have eight - to my mind enough for four small but growing children and two adults - one of whom (my husband) is a small eater, and bearing in mind that there will be chicken too. Not enough says my husband. Really? I was hoping the sausages would just be the side offering because I know that if there are too many of them, the chicken will not be eaten. I was hoping the chicken would be the main attraction, but obviously not. He insisted so we now have heaps of sausages, which makes me wonder whether I should bother with the chicken at all. But maybe I should not sweat about this. It's the kind of question that comes with the very privileged lives that we lead. It's really not a question worth asking. For,

"So long as you have food in your mouth, you have solved all questions for the time being." Franz Kafka

Anyway - a question - do we have enough sausages? and two different answers, based on the same facts. So obviously the answer has something to do with the mind of the person giving it.

The second reason came from my newest project. My daily musings on art, inspired by my diary. This one is purely for me and not to be published or shown to anyone. I could just look at the pictures, investigate a bit and think about them, but it seemed to me that if I went to the trouble of doing that then I should write it down somewhere. Just for me. So I do. And there are always questions. Today's painting was an obscure painting by an obscure artist of the 16th century, of a jousting tournament in Nuremberg. The only commentary I could find was on somebody else's personal blog - and I really enjoyed reading it because his mind obviously sort of worked like mine. Every question he answered about the picture and the event it portrayed brought up a whole lot of new questions. Yes there were some factual answers but some of them were a bit vague and some of them were very dodgy. One site, when talking about the artist said he was an engraver, and the few painting he had made had all disappeared - well obviously not because here was the one we were looking at - in a museum in Munich. But the process of investigating one thing leads you off in other directions that pose yet more questions:

“A casual encounter with an image and a line of text while pursuing an entirely unrelated line of enquiry led me down a side path.” said my blogger, Aaron Cripps.

And I find this so satisfying. You learn so much - even if it is trivial stuff. And isn't it interesting that there are so many people out there beavering away finding answers to so many obscure and possibly meaningless things. The human mind seems to be endlessly curious. Think of something and somebody will know a lot about it. It is what has brought us to where we are - the quest for knowledge, for finding answers to the questions we ask. And we are still looking for answers to the big questions of life, the universe and everything. Douglas Adams' answer of 42 was a masterstroke - so meaningless, and opening up a whole new line of enquiry whilst demonstrating that there most likely are no answers to these big questions. Children, of course, ask questions all the time - and lots of them are unanswerable, or just beyond our individual knowledge. Everything is new to them and so they ask questions. But everything should be new to us too - or we should try to see everything as new. There is always one more question to ask. Like the sausages - not just should we buy more - but which ones? Pork, beef, fat, thin, small chipolatas, flavoured with honey or herbs, or real 'gourmet' ones that cost a whole lot more. Then there's the question of whether to serve them in bread, or bread rolls or not. And do I provide the dreaded tomato sauce, or do I make my own? Questions, questions.

Do you think it's because we can't answer the big questions - why are we here? how did the world come to be? why do people do the things they do? what happens when we die?..., that we fill our lives with finding answers to the little and medium-sized questions. We have amassed a huge amount of knowledge, and it is constantly being built on, by asking questions, by setting up a problem that needs to be solved. I think human ingenuity is amazing and I am sure that we could solve all of the world's problems if we put our minds to it. But alas the primitive part of the psyche is still there (particularly in men it seems to me) and it gets in the way of progress, because it seems to me that the movers and shakers are the ones dominated by the primitive urges.

And yet we do inch forward, little by little. Keep asking questions and do seek out the answer. It has never been easier to explore the universe of knowledge that is out there. I learn something every day - just by asking questions, sometimes only of myself. I remember my university friend's boyfriend (now husband), asking her at the end of every day, what she had learnt that day. We don't realise how much we learn. Try writing it down - keep a mini diary of what you have learnt - or what question you think is worthy of an answer. It opens the mind and keeps it active.

“Another casual encounter, another little journey of discovery to be made.” Aaron Cripps, Europeenses

And I'll end with a few random quotes I found:

“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.” Voltaire

“He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how.” Friedrich Nietzsche

"I don't think it's the job of filmmakers to give anybody answers. I do think, though, that a good film makes you ask questions of yourself as you leave the theatre." Paul Haggis

The question, it seems, is much more important than the answer.