By José Dominguez, May 28, 2020 — I don’t know how Adam and Eve talked when they left Paradise, but I suppose they didn’t formulate the question. I guess everything was affirmative to them. Every detail of the universe was an assertion and they had no doubts, curiosity, ambition, lust or whatever as they ended with the tale.
For me, questions are something more, they are vital. Many years ago, I came in touch with Socrates’ teachings and learned that through questioning we can find the true meaning of things and life. This method was called myopic and its used to find the truth by questioning. After reading plenty of books I realized that what he did in reality was to bully his opponents, to strip them of their false knowledge and confront them with their true self and their ignorance. It sounds great but perhaps I will not assent so easily to be bullied by a powerful mind just to know for sure that I was simple and a perfect idiot and ignorant.
Well, those who had the privilege to hear Socrates opted to kill him and [he] accomplished that sentence by drinking the deadly poison as if he was drinking a cup of coffee. But I learned that it takes courage to learn the true meaning of things and it is not easy and safe to subscribe to traditions.
After many years of wondering, confusing knowledge with wisdom, one of those days when I was working in a General Motors factory, I found a special character. His name was Anastasio. He was the one who hired me, supposing that I was a strong candidate oriented to work, efficiency, quality, and cost benefits. Nevertheless, being a great facilitator and trainer he enjoyed to confront his audiences and very often he told us, “You can ask me any question about my presentation. Don’t stop your questioning believing that it is a stupid question, because the only stupid question is the one that you do not formulate.” I guess every environment he could handle any kind of question, but the metric was that our incapacity or silence is not the way to solve the riddles of life that help us to grow.
Sometimes questioning can lead us, if we are not prepared, to dangerous areas, just because we are not so mature. I knew the story of a very famous and popular Mexican gay writer named Salvador Novo, that had a very important position in our Mexican culture. He was the official chronicler of Mexico City. One reporter asked him if he could ask a personal a question. And as my former boss Anastasia Contreras, he replied that he will willing to answer any question. The reporter asked him “Mr. Novo, how did you become gay?” and he very calmly answered, “Doing the same thing you are doing now my son.” The reported was so perplexed that he asked, “What am I doing that will take me to that road?” “Well, asking questions, asking questions,” he answered. I think that he was sending a message that was if we are not prepared to face the consequences of our questioning, we can end up doing unsuspected things.
Today, I diminish my search for facts not opinions and growing older I think that the best riddle that I have to solve is the day that I am living.