Persistent Questions
The previous chapter suggested that recurrence and persistence are not always easy to distinguish in the case of questions.
Some questions genuinely disappear and later return.
Others seem capable of remaining present even when they are not actively considered.
Such questions deserve closer attention.
A persistent question is not simply a question that remains unanswered.
It may be.
Yet in many cases, it receives numerous answers.
The answers change.
The question remains.
Consider again: "What should I do with my life?"
No single answer permanently settles the question.
An answer may resolve the itch of such a question for a certain time.
Yet new possibilities continue to emerge.
New commitments create new choices.
New circumstances create new tensions.
Some questions are connected to such broad regions of experience that no single answer can exhaust them.
Individual answers may resolve particular instances.
Yet the opening remains.
Other questions persist in a different way.
A person may spend years asking: "What makes a life meaningful?"
The answers may evolve repeatedly.
Relationships.
Achievement.
Family.
Art.
Service.
Understanding.
Faith.
Different answers may become convincing at different times and with different force.
Yet the question itself persists through these changes.
The same can occur in intellectual life.
Questions such as:
"What is knowledge?"
"What is justice?"
"What is consciousness?"
have accompanied some individuals for decades and entire traditions for centuries.
The persistence of such questions cannot be explained merely by a lack of answers.
Many answers have been proposed.
Often the answers themselves become part of the history of the question.
This suggests that not all questions relate to their answers in the same way.
Some questions arise from openings that can be closed.
Once the answer arrives, the opening disappears.
The question loses its grip.
Other questions seem different.
Their answers do not eliminate the opening from which they arise.
Instead, the answer becomes part of an ongoing process of orientation.
New experiences reshape the answer.
New circumstances reveal new possibilities.
The opening remains capable of generating further questions.
The difference is not simply that one kind of question receives answers while the other does not.
Both may receive answers.
The difference is that some openings can be exhausted, while others remain active through many answers.