The Question

Let us simmer over our incalculable cauldron, our enthralling confusion, our hotch-potch of impulses, our perpetual miracle — for the soul throws up wonders every second.

—Virginia Woolf

Sometimes, we just don't understand why or what or how.

Sometimes the question overwhelms any answer we could possibly give to the grief, the loss, or sudden change in circumstance or history.

We may have been conditioned not to know how to respond to change without allegiance to what we learned from our family or culture. Perhaps we have been shamed or punished if we challenged the norms of our communities. Maybe we were alone in our thoughts or questions. If no one else was really there to support us to think for ourselves or help us through, it was hard to trust or find a safe space to land. We may have built cocoons of apparent safety or comfort, sometimes at the cost of living a fuller life that would include dipping into the unknown.

Surely, in the journey of recovery, our old beliefs about ourselves can fall apart. However, the part we possibly never trusted in ourselves can grow, quickening the impulse to question. At these junctures, and throughout the life ahead, this kind of inquiry may beckon us to reach deeper inside and utilize a new curiosity despite the old prompts of shame or fear.

Perhaps we stop and consider the question beyond any previous answer, and then approach and even embrace what is yet unknown.

Our eyelids flutter as we awaken to the bright wind of change. Those questions remain; in fact, we have more questions than ever. It is what happens with growth.

Indeed, it is the questions beyond the creaking door that remind us that we are truly and wondrously alive.

We open the door.