Thinking about the power of questioning

I wonder...
should I stay
Or should I go
Is it dead
or does it grow
Are there only questions,
will we ever know?

As I'm reading Chris Tovani's, "I Read It, But I Don't Get it", I'm wondering about questioning and the expansiveness it can lead to. This woman writes a book that in many ways is just an addition to the mounting literature available to teachers, which reiterates some of the same research-based educational structure stuff that makes so many--well, myself anyway--sick. But within it she discusses some very real truths about what readers, particularly good readers, do to make reading meaningful. How readers take information from text and use it to add on to their already growing knowledge base. I begin to protract this out to what questioning does for readers of life, and, conversely, what answers do to questions. A question can be like a dream. Something that is intangible, untouchable, unrealized. The realization of a dream, like an answer, is dream-quenching. But how do you become comfortable living in a dream world?

I guess the answers are /you must/ and /you don't. /A word, balance, comes to mind. I've somehow avoided that word, or rather the action associated with that word, as I've wandered along. It just doesn't seem sexy, or inspiring, or motivating, or impassioned. But it does seem like survival. I think we all want to live impassioned lives, but sustained impassioned life is preferred to a ravaging flame-like passioned living that dies soon after ignition. So, are we stuck with the concept of "balanced passion" as we mature? It seems like an oxymoron, yet there seems to be some verifiable truth lying in between those words. How did Mozart live a life of creativity? How does an Olympic swimmer get to the Olympics? How does Mark Twain write some of the greatest writing we've ever laid eyes upon? Surely it has something to do with their abilities to capture passion in practicality. Perhaps a better expression for this is "practical passion". But that sounds even more dull and pedagogical.

We need questions, we need answers. We don't know when we've satisfied either longing sufficiently. Can that be true? Or am I just establishing a wishy-washy, escape-from-answering-a question-about-questioning-and-answers paradigm? Well, I still believe the "We need questions, we need answers" part. I added the sentence after that to show that there is the line between polar opposites that we search for that is not there, but it must be walked. In other words, there is gray; there is blurry. We don't know, necessarily, when to stop questioning or answering. We just do it as it satisfies. And I guess that's just it. I use my satisfaction as a measure of how I'm doing in life. If I'm satisfied, I'm doing what I'm supposed to. If I'm dissatisfied, I'm doing something wrong. That seems very Hedonistic. But I've been around enough of mankind's exploits, and experienced a little of my own, to know that it is in giving that we truly get satisfaction. Fulfilling the "give to get" desire in ourselves is probably the highest level for humanity. It is the holy grail of human existence. But how does question and answer get us there?

I guess the point I'm trying to make is I've been searching for answers, but maybe it's time I start searching for questions. In Tovani's book, she says it's questions that give readers a purpose for reading. As the reader delves in with their questions aloft in their heads, they discover what the author thinks, why the author is writing, and the reader benefits by evaluating their own thinking. So maybe I should attempt being a reader of life. Questions amaze. They puzzle. They mystify. They demistify. They befuddle, they amuse. Questions are miracles. They give us purpose for living.