The Idyll of a Questioning Mind

I have questions that constantly churn in the back of my mind. Questions about us, our conditions, our states. Questions about our responsibilities for ourselves and each other. Questions about how we determine morality, ethics, and justify our actions. Questions about our primacy, our "apex" positions within this hierarchy of nature, and what it means for our responsibilities. It's a lot to chew on and consider.

I took the time on this past Saturday to drive and walk. It was a gray and gloomy day which is about my kind of speed, given I find that glaring sun mutes colours and contrasts and the grays change your perspective towards the same. It's a perfect backdrop for that moody, depth-seeking pursuit of colour and contrast.

In the parking lot of a Lutheran church, tucked off the side of a country road, I found this branch laden with crab apples in varying states of decay. The rain had been falling steadily throughout the morning in bursts and intermittent delicate dances of mist. It begged patience but provided its own rich set of opportunity to capture the seemingly small and insignificant.

This scene poses questions that I can readily answer through the aspects of physics and observation. Surface tension holds the water to the crab apple though the inevitability of gravity will work against it until it falls. The sinewy thread of spider web in the background is faintly visible, held in tension between two rain-slicked branches. There's a lot to take in, the camera's focal plane making the background fade in and out with the richness of bokeh and gently blurred edges.

The questions I can't answer given this scene are more existential, like those highlighted at the beginning. In pausing to capture this, I run to the security of my mechanical thinking, the "known" set of variables that I can control and understand. It helps ground me in the present but cannot control the wanderings of a mind that is then left unleashed. Photography is good for the soul that way as it lets the unconscious mind run in fertile fields, as if it's a horse seeing the verdant green for the first time since winter (and farting and kicking in excitement, should you want to disabuse yourself of the idyll of that scene).

I came away from this walkabout with pictures, to be sure, but also with contemplation. I found an agitation in my soul centered around the meaningfulness of what I'd accomplished in the years I've lived. I questioned my purpose in what I'm doing now, as a technologist, and what I could be doing to better benefit the world around me. I found myself disquieted at knowing that for all the "success" in my life, I don't know that I've moved the needle at all in human progress. I'm a cog in an overwhelmingly large machine, aren't I?

I'm not despondent in asking these questions. Rather, they give me hope, something to aspire to, something to add to a punch list of opportunities to grab ahold of. There's hope in the seemingly overwhelming weight that these questions portend and, while I perhaps don't know how to answer them right away, they give purpose and meaning to how I choose to live my life.

Dear souls, a crab apple hanging on for dear life in the face of the coming winter is probably not going to be the existential crisis you need to change your worldview. If it were that simple, walking out your front door and watching the leaves fall would probably be more resonant.

No, this moment was an illustration of permission, of allowance, of freedom to question and not have a ready response. It was a time, brief as it may have been, to unshackle those wild horses and let them roam, seeking out the hidden, the untamed corners of my heart.

We're starting out a new week, full of questions that beg answers, stories that need to be written, moments that need to be captured. I'd submit that within the busyness that follows, we all need the time to let our minds wander, to question without expectation of response, and then, when all else is still, begin to orient ourselves to answering them. It is, after all, part of what it means to be human.

May it ever be so.

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