An answer is true only in reference to a question.

*

To name something is to answer the question: “What is it?”

That question is set by us.

It is answered through good-faith collaboration between the asking and that which is named.

But the question can be re-asked and re-answered again and again: “What is it?”

. . . .

“It is an object.”

“It is what is here, now.”

“It is an organism.”

“It is something useful.”

“It is something dangerous.”

“It is phenomena.”

“He is a friend.”

“He is someone looking at me.”

“He is someone asking ‘What is it?'”

“He is someone looking at me and asking ‘What is it?'”

“He is someone looking at me and asking ‘Who is he?'”

“He is someone looking at something and asking me ‘What is it?'”

. . . .

To agree on what something is means we have first agreed on how we ask “What is it?”

We aren’t in the habit of questioning such simple and obvious questions.

*

Asking creates space for an answer.

A deep personality knows how to ask in many different ways.

An expansive personality is willing to ask in many different ways with others.

When we have no space for an answer, when we lack the capacity to ask the answer’s question, the answer is irrelevant or nonsensical. Or we attach the answer to another question, sometimes with partial success.

*

Sometimes when we refute an answer, what we are refuting is the question.

Sometimes the refutation of a question deprives the other of space. We constrict the other’s world.

Sometimes the refutation of a question deprives the other of shelter. We take away the source of ready answers that protect the other from the vacuum of questions which extends infinitely in every direction from every truth.

*

An answered question is like a bright spot.

An unanswered question is like a dark shadow.

An unasked question is a blind spot, which is neither dark nor light, but is simply nonexistent.