An assignment for our readers. Take this title and conjure
with it. See what you can produce out of the top of your head
or the bottom of your sleeve, as did these two writers at a
creative writers' workshop. We'd like to see your efforts,
with a minimum of rewriting...
I
by Rivka Glick
I don't have the answers. I don't even have the questions,
anymore. I used to, but they just sort of, somehow,
evaporated, it would seem, into thin air. Sometimes, lately,
I think that the best answer I can muster to any given
question is, "I dunno. I don't have the answer."
I used to think I had to have the answers -- all of them.
First, for myself, because I just had to know, was burning to
know. And also, for others. What if they asked me? What if I
didn't know?
What then? I don't think anyone ever did ask me anything,
except my kids, when they were small, and they paid scant
attention to my answers, if I had any, which I may not have
done.
I used to think of This World as a classroom, with my
homework assignment each day being to figure out what that
day meant, what its meaning was in my life, how it fit in,
what I was supposed to learn from it so that I could grow. On
some days, I thought I might have a glimmer or a hint, but on
the whole, like Alice, everything generally seemed to become
`curiouser and curiouser'.
Eventually, I asked myself: where is there a requirement to
know answers? Nowhere, as far as I knew. This is a relief. I
keep trying to understand whatever I can understand, but I no
longer feel that I'm not `up to scratch', somehow a failure,
if it's all beyond me. I know that there are answers -- some
known by those wiser than I, some not revealed for now. If it
were better for me to know them, then they would be revealed
to me; and if not, not.
So I don't have the answers -- which answers well enough for
me.
and another attempt at reconciling not knowing the
answers...
I Don't Have the Answer
by D. Shain
Who does?
And does it matter?
Can you live a life by answers?
Isn't life one big quest,
One big question mark?
Oh, there are lots of answers along the way
Like why I was a Holocaust child,
Survivor of a large family.
It was to produce another large family,
And be grateful for each and every one
In a generation priding itself on Z(ero) P(opulation)
G(growth).
One small period following a wordless statement
To cancel at least one question mark.
The many big and little whys of my life
Do seem to have fallen into place, so neatly, into the
groove.
Sure, I can see marvelous `because's
Which fill me with amazing confidence for the future.
Mine, my children's,
The future of our people.
Reasons pop up all the time.
Just like the sunflower seeds
I plopped into a flower pot, before Pesach,
Upon an impulse,
For want of nothing better to do with them.
They've sprouted, believe it or not,
And I point them out ecstatically to my grandchildren.
I drink my 6 a.m. coffee, a toast to their green light
Every morning, these days, a green light to my soul.
With answers like these,
Reassurances of rebirth, growth, continuity,
The soul-satisfying sight of sun and sprouts,
Spring, and so much more! With wordless answers like
these,
Who cares about the questions?
These may never produce real sunflowers.
But I, for one, won't care to ask why.
