Since young, we have been ingrained with a mindset that everything has its answer. Isn’t it? At school, we were taught that question A has a certain definition, and by that definition, you can search for what makes it a question in the first place. You have been asked to practice your mental faculty to come up with an answer that most people agree on, you have been asked to search for an answer in pretty much everything throughout your life. Undeniably speaking, there is an answer for every objective phenomenon that we have come across, science has done a solid good job on that, the problem arises when we seek answers even to our subjective occurrences.
The complexity of life has led us astray from what we want. By complexity, I mean that there has been a drastic and constant surge in terms of the amounts of things that are unnecessary in our lives, even to such an extent that we are deluded into believing they are undoubtedly necessary. We hold onto answers that we feel can give us a sense of identity. We derive meanings from such answers to solidify who we are. It never occurs to us that answers have in a way prevented us from seeing the fact that we are indeed problematic and chaotic in our fortress of mentality. The fortress is collapsing, and yet we are still seeking a solution that can maintain its rigidity.
It probably sounds to you that it is a logical move, we must try hard to seek answers to our problems, every great scientific discovery has wonderfully demonstrated its usefulness in answering a certain phenomenon that was once deemed a mystery to people, and every great mathematical formula provides a corresponding answer to a certain type of mathematical puzzle. With that certainty, we conclude that our mental disturbances can indeed be solved by an “answer”. The types of answers vary from one to another, some may look rather positive, holy, logical, and some may terrify us out of sheer evil.
And yes, we have all kinds of answers, thanks to the rising of social media and the kingdoms of cultures.
Are we whole again now? Are we no longer depressed just because we think we have received a comforting answer? Are we no longer unhappy just because there are books that can teach us how to be happy? Are we no longer self-loathing just because people are telling us to buckle up and practice self-love? There are all sorts of answers, be they from religions, social media, comparisons, self-deception, and et cetera.
Answers do not necessarily equate to enlightenment or happiness, it is still the same “person” who seeks answers, no matter how sophisticated the answers are.
Maybe the answer is never the answer we sought, and maybe the real “answer” lies unmoved all along.
To quote Jiddu Krishnamurti, the observer is the observed.