Sit with the question

My mind is an answering machine. It comes up with answers, meanings, conclusions, theories all day, every day. It's automatic.

It likes the solidity. To feel like, in the immortal words of the narrator of Fight Club, that whatever else happens, I've got that sofa problem handled.

Humans like solidity in general, I think. We build things constantly, taking ephemeral things like trees and people and making them into solid things like houses and businesses, each time answering an unspoken question. Each time we do this, we take something alive and full of potential--a question--and stamp an answer on it.

My brain tries to stamp my life solid as well. What am I? Well, I'm an entrepreneur. There, answered. Don't like that? Well, I'm a basketball player. A leader. A good looking guy (with a growing bald spot). My brain can do this forever.

It stamps other people with labels, too. This woman is good, this one is mean. This guy is more successful than me. This one is not interesting. Over and over, all the time.

But none of that is real. All the answers are made up, and only exist to limit my experience. Humans (and all of reality) are really one big question, and we're just trying to make ourselves less anxious with all our stamping answers on everything. Stamping someone with a label doesn't change the person, only limits our relationship to them to a relationship with their label.

I find the alternative, when I remember to do it, much more rewarding (not to mention fundamentally, unavoidably, more accurate). I find I pay much closer attention to the amazing, detailed, massive, changing aliveness of my life, and all the people in it, when I simply sit with the question.