There Are Years To Ask Questions And Years To Find The Answers

As you progress through this uncertain, sometimes chaotic, but always wonderful ocean that is the life cycle, you realize that there are years to ask questions and years to find answers. After all, perhaps it is true that everything has its moment and that everything has its own sky under which to happen.

Buddhism tells us that sometimes people are looking for what they are not yet ready to find. However, it is in our genes to be curious, it is in our mind to ask ourselves questions, overcome limits and give meaning to anything, to any fact that at a given moment surrounds us or disturbs us.

Similarly, another aspect we should reflect on is how to find the answers to all these existential doubts so common to human beings. Is this all that life can give me or does it reserve something else for me? Am I prone to do better things or do I have to settle for what I have? Is this the love that I deserve? Why haven’t I found the perfect partner yet? 

Questions like these are certainly the most common, the most familiar voids that reside in every mind, in every heart that yearns for the scent of something more authentic, of something deeper. We invite you to reflect on this .

All the answers lie in a quiet corner

Gregorio Marañón, a Spanish doctor and philosopher, said that in this world we will defeat diseases, but we will not kill haste. We live in an accelerated dimension, so much so that there is no shortage of parents who want their children to skip a few steps to consolidate their reading-writing or math skills as soon as possible. They think, deluding themselves, that in this way their children will improve their academic performance and, therefore, will have guaranteed success. Perhaps a linear path in the imagination, more complicated in reality.

On the other hand, the so-called “subitomania” has established itself in our daily life: we anticipate the future without living the present, we live a tomorrow that has not yet arrived because our here and now is terribly demanding. Haste is now a lifestyle that confers prestige, status. We believe that stopping for a moment means not having ideas, not being productive or valid. In reality, however, this acceleration brings us only obvious vital dissatisfaction and many more questions than answers.

Living focused on tomorrow forces us to be simple wandering souls without a full and authentic awareness of the present. In the midst of this detachment from the here and now we will never find the answers to our vital needs. The years will pass marked by uncertainty and frustration. The mind, and we cannot forget this, needs calm to connect its roots with the surrounding environment, with emotions …

It is there that we can find the best answers, in this lake of serenity that allows you to have a relaxed mind, which understands that authentic excellence, at times, is reached by unplugging.

The meaning of life: a question of perspective

Viktor Frankl spoke at the time of the  need for people to acquire intentional consciousness. The simple fact of having a goal and of fighting for it, of believing in something in a full and meaningful way allows us to transform ourselves into more free, responsible and linked beings to the reality that surrounds us. Having a vital goal makes sense and, at the same time, gives an answer.

However, sociologists tell us that people are influenced by the contexts in which they find themselves. The family, the education received and the psychosocial environment sometimes inject us with this intentional consciousness. We should reflect on this point, because understanding the window from which we see and understand life will help us to know ourselves much better and find better answers to our needs.

Below we list a series of approaches that, in some way, serve as a framework for giving meaning to many of the questions we ask ourselves at a given moment:

• Hedonism: to live is first of all to enjoy, to focus our existence on pleasure.

• Materialism: It is based on the maxim that the more things we get the better.

• Selflessness: offering ourselves to others is certainly our main need in this case.

• Sensationalism: to live is to experience as many things, of whatever nature they are.

• Psychologism: We aspire to our personal fulfillment according to Maslow’s pyramid of needs.

• Theism: we focus on an existence based on a religious or spiritual code from which to understand life and our very existence towards a goal.

• Love: to live is first of all to love and to be loved.

• Rationalism: we aspire to have vast and multiple knowledge.

• Militarism: to live is to struggle to survive, sometimes against one, sometimes against many.

This list is nothing more than a small example of an indicative nature. It is we who  must find this transcendent and special meaning that integrates us, that guides us to give us the best answers by mobilizing all our psychological and motivational resources towards these goals.

What is yours?

Images courtesy of  Joel Robinsone