QUESTIONS I was once told that questions have their answers built in. All you have to do is subject them to a little scrutiny before the whole package begins to appear, almost as if by magic. For example, take the question that every human being asks themselves at some point in their life: What am I supposed to do? This is practically a no-brainer. Obviously, the one glaring phrase in the sentence is supposed to. And you no sooner see it than another question rears its ugly head: Who says I’m supposed to do anything? The very fact that we ask this question (the first one) suggests to us something that we believe in very profoundly, but rarely mention, i.e., that we somehow had a conversation with God before we were born, a conversation in which we agreed to be born, with a certain array of physical characteristics, to a selected set of parents, in the context of a particular culture, and so on. It even suggests that we perhaps had some agreement with the Deity to participate in our/His chosen culture at a certain specified level. If you carry this reasoning far enough, you can’t help but imagine some hypothetical elements of the pre-birth conversation. It is all too easy to envision the Master Planner saying, “Now you won’t remember this meeting; it’s part of the contract. In fact, it’s the object of the game, to figure the whole thing out. Once you do, you will of course be removed and transferred to the next level, a higher one that’s even more difficult to figure out.” Now I know this sounds a little silly. But here’s the thing: it’s either true or false. If it’s true, then it does indeed suggest that we’re supposed to do something, that we’re involved in some pre-arranged game with Providence, the object of which is to figure it out. But if it’s false, then we’re not (necessarily) supposed to do anything, except maybe collect as many toys as we can before we die.
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