Why ask?

I am a questioner. Yes, everybody is. Everybody wants to know; everybody has to know. Questioning is a vital part of one’s life. Life is vague, so complicated and one has to ask to see clearly. Everybody doesn’t like being blind of something and human as we are, we search, we want answers, we want a clear view of things. It’s the beginning of knowing, the origin of knowledge.

Asking questions is the essence of knowledge itself. It makes knowledge as it is. It is the beginning of wisdom. Yes, for asking questions leads to the want – the need – of knowing the answers to the extent of knowing the truth. It is a necessity. Yes, for there is greater need to know, to improve, and to be better. How do we become better if we stay stagnant on the things we know now? How do we improve if we do not move on to new knowledge?

I want to know; we all want to know. There is a great longing for knowledge. There is a thirst for wisdom. Human being is never satisfied of what they know now. As what was written above, life is vague and men want to take the blur away and see things clearly as it must be seen. It’s visible on a child as he asked his question. We sometimes think of it as nonsense but to a child, it is important. It is to him the stepping stone to new, more important questions. I could clearly see little Isaac Newton asking his mother as his ball fell on the ground. I could see his curiosity over the event. Maybe his mother thought of it as a lame question. Maybe she thought that knowing the reason isn’t going to change things in life. But the lame question little Isaac had asked is now one of the greatest knowledge the world has ever known. It changed how we think of things. The same thing goes to Mr. Magellan as he set off to the west to reach the east. People mocked the thought of it. But as he stepped on to his ship, he started to find how the world is round and the truth of reaching the east from the west.

It started from a doubt, a want to know, a need to ask questions. What we know now is a curiosity before. And therefore, we never stop being curious. Let us not stop asking. Let us not lose eagerness of knowing more; for there is so much to learn, so much to find out. We acknowledge that we don’t know now what has to be known and then we went on wanting to know it. As what a great philosopher once said, “I know that I don’t know therefore I want to know.” Let’s take it from Socrates. Besides, there is no harm in asking.