? is my favourite punctuation mark.

To question is to understand, to append, to introspect, and to restructure. Everything can be questioned in any way. This ferocious independence of thought can lead to a number of absurd questions (that probably are not even structurally valid), blasphemous questions, questions that shatter life-long beliefs, questions that give rise to life-long beliefs, questions that make you despise yourself for the immediate after-thought, questions that make you feel like a very intellectual individual... you get the drift.

I believe myself to be going through a novel phase. I am not even sure if this can be called a phase. Perhaps a newly acquired trait. I have been asking all my life. Asking for money (which comes easily by virtue of being a financial parasite), asking when we’d reach, but above all, asking questions. My mother used to call me a question bank up until I was eight. Like most kids, I asked about the functioning of life’s components. A kid sees everything with wonder and a desire to know new. While getting mogged by seemingly the most important purpose life can ever conjure- getting 25 in the science unit test- I continued to question, but the desire was lost. Now, while I go through life-changing experiences and hopefully life-building ones, I am questioning again. However, this time I question the already acquired. Hence, something unprecedented. The comical part is the juxtaposition of the last two sentences.

Every reel I consume, every article I read, and every opinion I come across leads me to question myself about what I believe in. And while it results in me getting lost in my own thoughts for a good minute, it is shaping my fundamentals and building the person I will be. I do not wish to name it ‘discourse’ because it is neither a course nor am I doing it for academia. Questioning has given me an opportunity to know the strangest depths of idiocy I can reach. Why would you dye a dog key-lime green, for instance?

I have many opinions because I have many questions. I keep changing them, too. I think everybody should be given that chance, unless they are politicians with MPLAD misuse potential. Politics and greater public administration are way too dynamic to be judged by this parameter, and they’ll probably have their own blogs sometime.

The point I am trying to make here is the dynamic nature of being a human being that comes with acquiring and questioning the acquired. People change, and most times, rightfully so. Most inventions happened because someone questioned. When everything is so temporary, why would you want to die on a hill for something you heard on the 9 o’clock news?

Having said this, a society should also be responsible enough to provide the space for a different answer. A very problematic notion of tolerance comes into play here. ‘I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it’. An individual and a society can progress or get destroyed by this. But they would change, for sure.

‘The only constant is change’ and it begins with a question.