As infuriating as it is to deal with the steady reductionism of the toddler’s inquires, imagine what it would be like to live like that, stuck inside a head with a brain that refuses to accept answers on an arbitrary basis, instead pushing on with "Why, why, why?!?!??!?!" until it feels pathological. Do you know what it feels like to be blessed with the power to deconstruct and examine, yet cursed with a lack of synthesis, the ability to solve (or even resolve!) the conundrums and queries that bubble up without invitation?

Welcome to my world.

I am not sure when I became so hopelessly inquisitive, and I sure as hell don’t know why. I don’t remember being overly intrigued by the ways, whys, and how’s of stuff as a kid. I never took the TV apart to see how it worked or tried to dissect the dog, though I do remember cutting open a dears head once to look at its brain. And as much time as I spend asking questions of myself, critically analyzing thoughts and ideas, I am hopelessly gullible in conversation with people. But give me time on my own to think about the world and the people in it, and I just get sucked in.

If I had to try to pin it down, I would say that my splendid American collegiate education contributed the most to my state. Whether it was the classes or the psychedelics I took, well, that’s something that still needs sorting out.

With the exception of maybe history, most collegiate programs train you to deconstruct, take it apart, find out what makes it up, makes it happen. Scientific method, hermeneutic circle, etc., etc. etc., ad nauseum. Mix this in with a low sense of self confidence, and I spend all my time trying to figure out what the hell I know. Every time I come up with an answer, my deconstruction mechanism kicks and says, "Well, yeah okay, but then how come THAT?, " always staking me a level deeper. I suppose I am learning all the way, but it would be nice to be able to just accept stuff.

I can’t just accept things though, because I know that fundamentally, there is no meaning in anything that we say, do, or think. that’s what psychedelics taught me. If a tree falls in the forest, it still makes noise, but if there are no people around to think about it, all the stuff in the universe doesn’t have any a whit of meaning. Meaning only has as much meaning as we are willing to give it.

Part of my eternal search owes itself to this understanding. If you take anything back far enough, there comes a point where it’s all arbitrary. The words we use, the categories we employ, the way we act, these are all agreed upon symbols and system for getting along, but there is no reason that it has to be done this way. Any casual glance at the cultural variation around the world makes this evident. Hell, there’s not even a reason why we should have started down that path in the first place. If we could rewind this chemistry experiment we call life and run it again, we’d get a radically different result. How can we care so much about stuff that has no inherent meaning?

As long as you don’t take it that far and remind yourself that we all live in a dream, one can get by playing with, and accepting the rules of the games we play. Its impossible to play along completely though, when the only thing you know is that everything else you know is wrong. Within each little system of meaning its all coherent, but the instant you step outside that system you can see it’s just a sham.

Or maybe it’s just that I relish pondering the imponderables. Maybe I don’t really want to know, I just like to think, to explore with my mind, constructing potentials and possibilities, trying each one on for size, stabbing at meaning in a dark room with a blindfold on. Doesn’t really accomplish much, but it’s a better way to spend your time than beating your head on the cement.

It isn’t all bad, you know. Asking questions gets you lots of relevant answers if you surround yourself with the right people (you hear me, WastedP?!?!?) But even more than this, asking questions requires that you know what you don’t know. You don’t ask people your name because you know that. You might ask someone why you have that name though. Always be pushing the limits of knowledge like that.

Sometimes I get positive feedback about it. My wife often asks me things and I often can answer them. Sometimes she complains that she can never tell me anything that’s happening in the news because I know it in advance. So I suppose that keeping my ear to the ground is paying off. But damn I wish that sometimes I could just be satisfied. But then again, I’d have stopped learning. I would rather be hopelessly lost in a sea of questions than ridiculously complacent in uncritical ignorant bliss.