ANSWERS GIVE YOU CLOSURE, BUT IT’S THE QUESTIONS THAT GROW YOUR SOUL

@KeepUpWithKaustubh

The road not taken in HR corridors

In your eyes I lose myself,

In your words I find my strength,

In your answers I seek solace,

But in your questions…I see a promise

Your questions, they show me - you care

Questions haunt us all our lives. Does she love me? Should I propose? What will I choose as my career? This car or that? Should I have children? Should I make a job switch at this stage of my life? Can I risk becoming an entrepreneur? Have I found the love of my life? What is love?

These questions keep us up at night. So we seek answers. Answers are comfortable, they help us find closure. Once we have an answer, we don’t need to ask uncomfortable questions any more, nor do we need to wrack our brains. The butterflies in our stomach disappear. The heartache fades away. The wonderful thing about answers is that they help us move from one day to the next. But is that what our soul really needs? Love makes us feel alive. It makes the world go round; it throbs in every vein of our body. But perhaps we all agree that love is such a rush of emotions because there are far more questions than answers. Isn't a part of the allure or romance, the fact that there is so much to ask, explore and grow into?

The day your significant other said ‘yes’, the day your father said ‘no’, the day you were selected or rejected for the school/ club/ state team. Now here is where I think you should pause and look back at each of those life-defining answers. Those answers were either satisfying or disappointing in that moment. But what if…

What if the love of your life had said ‘no’? What if your father had said ‘yes’ instead? Questions open doors, they open your world up to a million opportunities…they allow the sunlight to come flooding in! Look back at your life, was it the answers that define you today? Or was it the questions that you forced yourself to ask out loud? Questions keep your mind working, they hold promise, they keep hope alive.

I remember how I met my wife. I remember how many variations of that one question I practiced in my head before I walked up to her and finally popped the question. Now after decades, when I look back, It’s the questions that led up to the answer that shaped my experiences, the answer was incidental. My life has taught me that the ones who have the courage to stand up and ask questions are the ones who earn the right answers.

Love is a strange thing. It makes the strongest people weak at the knees, but can make the most feeble people realise the strength of their souls. Questions expand our soul, questions make us think big. In fact, I would go as far as to say the beauty of love lies in the questions that keep us awake at night. Answers often bring down the tempo of this fierce emotion. 

If answers are stark reality, questions are lofty fantasy. Answers leave nothing to the imagination, they stifle creativity and banish other possibilities. Answers are useful only when they make way for more questions. Yes, she said ‘I do’ – and that was the end of a long wait. But the very next moment she asked ‘is this a dream, or is it true?’, and I decided in that moment to devote my entire self to making her dreams come true. 

So the next time a question haunts you, face it and smile. Because it’s those questions that determine your future and the size of your dreams. To everyone reading this, I would like to say that answers are the end; but questions are the beginning. Yes we need closure, but what we need more is to feel alive, to explore ourselves further, to really understand those we love and those who turn to us for inspiration. But don’t just take my word for it, here’s what Rudyard Kipling said:

I had six honest serving men – they taught me all I knew: Their names were Where and What and When – and Why and How and Who.  

Love creates the strongest emotions within us, the most vivid memories and the most thrilling experiences. And it's the questions that surround it, which make for all the drama. So embrace questions, feel alive, grow some more, live some more.