I forget where I saw this, but I was reading something a few weeks ago and this bit caught my attention:
Do not look for answers to questions that change nothing.
To rephrase, “If the answer doesn’t matter, then don’t ask the question.” At first I thought that it was a nice bit of wisdom. Sort of a method of simplifying your mental processes and maybe something I could implement more in life. Except that I got bogged down in the details and had all sorts of questions of my own, which defeats the purpose.
How do you know if the answer matters when you don’t know the answer? Peace of mind can be valuable, too. I guess there is a subset of situations in which you can already tell that you really and truly don’t need to know the answer.
Can you talk yourself into avoiding answering an important question by convincing yourself that you don’t need to know the answer? Denial is powerful.
Is it not part of human nature to be naturally inquisitive? So what if you don’t need to know the answer. It’s just what we do as people to seek answers to things which we do not know, to seek knowledge and understanding we don’t have. Or sometimes the process of coming to an answer is just a good mental exercise.
So much for simplification.
