The quest for the answer beckons the answer into becoming.
What if the answer has always been the arising?
This question arose within and guides my pondering today. Profound or contrived? Let’s give it some space and air to breathe before we judge it.
Increasingly, I’ve been experiencing my capacity to be with the questions that used to intimidate me. One of them—What is the point?—had on many occasions driven me into despair. I have sat across people who have raised the same question about their lives and felt into their aches and longings for meaning to our existence. An extremely basic question though not an easy one for our minds to answer or grasp. Neither is it a question that one can answer for another. Nonetheless, it is an important question. A hefty one that can bring up reactivity and reveal our hidden beliefs when we attend to it with open curiosity.
I am still on my way with mine. The answer is still nowhere near visible, yet at times palpable. One clue I have collected is that the point is to be found within, not without. Little phrases that we easily dismiss may actually hold ounces of truth. “There is no point in doing….” Right, what if that were true? That there is truly no point in doing because the point is present in being, and each time we leave our being to go somewhere, we lose (contact with) the point.
Also, it is interesting to consider the statement, “Doing gets us somewhere, being gets us nowhere.” There is some truth in that. Being does not need to get anywhere; there is no point to get to since the point is here. Doing gets us to some point, just not the point we are searching for. Because if it were, we would not still be chasing the next island on our map or searching for one to get to. The point is not a checkbox to tick or a stamp or penny to collect. But that does not mean our experiences are not valuable. Rather, if we were to turn our gaze in the opposite direction onto that in us which seeks the point, we may come closer to an answer. We may also discover what supports or gets in the way of our answer.
Do you remember the exclamations or questions you made as a child? What if you gave them space, water, and sunshine, and see what may germinate? It may take me my lifetime to attend to the questions that troubled me as a child and come to terms with my own truth. Yet, one thing I am becoming more certain of, there was always an answer, a response within, but back then, I was too young and incapable to make sense of any. Moreover, when my truth felt at odds with what was held in the environment I was in, it made sense why I would choose something else, though not knowingly, and withheld my truth. It was buried. It had laid dormant till I was ready to receive it.
“What’s the point?” is a question to be honored with sincerity. Is it not beautiful to wonder about our existence? Just because the possibility of finding an answer seems slim does not make a question less worthy. On the contrary, it can be an intriguing opening into the mystery, and what a quest it can offer.
The point is in the seed. The same point is in the stem, the leaves. The same point is also in the flower, and the fruit. It is just not a point to grasp but be.
The answer has always been here waiting to be revealed and understood, and, eventually, lived.
A question leads us to treasures, and what if it is not a chest to crack open but a voyage to embark on? Looking at the question mark, innocence chuckles at how a point sits at its base, completing it.
May you be gentle with yourself and your unanswered questions. What they need is an opening to emerge, and space to be.
Rosslyn Chay is an Integral Coach, healer, and poet. She helps her clients understand and unlock tension patterns in their soul to free them from the weight of their history. She is also the author of “The Weight of My Soul: Uncovering My Significance” and her weekly newsletter, “The Dandelion Notes”.
