There is no answer, and that is the answer
The biggest questions in life are so big we can't formulate them, we can only feel and live them. They don't have answers, and that's not necessarily a bad thing.
One Zen master said: “There is no answer, and that is the answer”.
Zen manages to pack infinite wisdom into pithy koans, while someone else might write a book to explain the same point.
We spend our lives seeking answers. We will find some of them, but we will not find answers to some of the deepest questions, which we will struggle even to formulate, but we will certainly feel them. The unspoken questions all of us carry around.
These questions are behind the force that’s constantly moving us to seek and learn, read and explore, build and achieve, living our lives as if our biggest task in life is to figure something out or achieve something — and then we’ll finally be okay.
Don’t we all have something to figure out? If only I found a way to make more money! If only I found a way to get my kids into private school! If only that person loved me! If only I were younger! If only I got a promotion! If only my startup raised a round! If only I lost weight!
Maybe at some point, we realise that money or promotions aren’t the answer (although there is nothing wrong with either) and start looking at philosophy or religion, hoping to find some deep answers there.
And then, the unsaid promise goes, we’ll be able to relax, finally.
If we’re lucky to avoid some cult leaders promising final answers, we eventually realise that there is no answer, and that is the answer.
The point isn’t for our lives to literally stop, of course. Maybe the kids do need to get into a private school, after all. Maybe we do need to make money. But nothing will feel like a final answer to the unspoken questions. There’s no lasting security anywhere.
And that’s the answer. The point of life is living it in the moment, being present to it, with its joys and sorrows, pain and pleasure, gains and losses. Just like the point of the dance is to dance, and the point of the music is the music itself, not the final accord. Otherwise, as Alan Watts noted, the best musicians would be those who get to the end of the concert fastest.
Each of us already knows enough, in a sense. I’m the biggest proponent of learning with a beginner’s mind, but hear me out.
I bet everyone reading this would get more out of applying what they already know instead of learning new things.
What do you already know about living a good life? Here’s my list off the top of my head.
Be grateful. Move your body. Eat healthy food. Don’t harm others. Be kind. Have time for stillness in your life. Don’t take anything too seriously, including yourself. Love yourself and others.
You get the gist; you know what I’m talking about. Doing what we already know is good will help immensely, yet we are more inclined to read about the latest research or new ideas, hoping to find something valuable there.
The paradox that we might never resolve but would be wise to accept is to keep moving through life, with its ups and downs, goals and lessons, while keeping an open attitude that remembers that in some fundamental way, what we feel we’re seeking is already here, and it has never been otherwise.
There is no answer, and that is the answer.