“The Questions That Don’t Want Answers”

The Questions That Don’t Want Answers

By [Ali Rehman]

Some questions rise in the mind the way fog rises from a lake—quietly, naturally, without permission. They drift between thoughts, linger in empty rooms, and settle on the edges of sleepless nights. We treat them like unwelcome guests, brushing them aside with noise or distraction, but they are patient. They wait for the silence.

And in that silence, they return.

There are questions we are taught to answer—questions with formulas, steps, instructions, consequences.

But then there are the others.

The ancient ones.

The ones woven into human bones long before language learned how to shape them.

These are the questions that don’t want answers.

They’re the ones that sit with you at dawn when you stare at a ceiling that has heard your secrets.

The ones that surface during grief, joy, loss, love.

The ones that pulse inside you when you stand at the edge of the sea, feeling very small and very infinite at the same time.

I used to chase these questions like prey.

If something could be asked, then surely it could be solved.

What is the meaning of life?

Why do we love people who cannot stay?

Why does time move forward and refuse to return what it stole?

Why do we remember moments that hurt more than the ones that healed us?

Why does the universe exist at all?

My younger self thought answers were the pathway to peace.

I thought clarity would cure the ache, extinguish uncertainty, give me control.

But the more I tried to cage the mysteries, the larger they seemed to grow.

One night, I found myself sitting alone on the balcony during a mild rain. Drops pattered against the railings like impatient fingers. The world smelled of wet earth and electricity. The air had a strange quality, as if something unseen was listening.

And without knowing why, I asked aloud:

“Why am I here?”

Not in the cosmic, philosophical sense—though that was part of it—but in the intimate, painfully human way.

Why this life?

Why this body?

Why this path of choices, mistakes, and unfinished conversations?

The rain didn’t answer.

The sky didn’t part with revelation.

No voice emerged from the clouds.

Instead, the question just… stayed.

Soft, still, heavy.

And for the first time, I didn’t try to outrun it.

I let it sit beside me like an old companion.

Slowly, I began to understand:

Some questions aren’t puzzles to solve.

They’re mirrors.

They show us where we have been avoiding ourselves.

Where we are still afraid.

Where we long for meaning that cannot be spoken aloud.

There are questions that bend the shape of a life simply by existing.

Questions that sculpt us, even in silence.

Why does beauty move us?

Why does kindness from a stranger make us cry?

Why do certain memories burn like candles while others fade like smoke?

Why do we fear endings more than beginnings?

We don’t answer these questions—

we live them.

And maybe that’s the point.

Civilizations have arisen, fallen, and rebuilt themselves around questions like these.

Philosophers chased them.

Poets worshipped them.

Monks sat in stone temples listening for them.

Scientists tried to pull their edges into equations.

Artists shaped them into light and shadow.

Yet none of them offered answers—

only reflections.

Because the questions that don’t want answers aren’t here to end the mystery.

They’re here to deepen it.

They remind us that the world is too vast to fit inside certainty.

That we are too complex to be summed up by logic alone.

That everything meaningful—love, grief, hope, desire, faith, fear—lives in the space between knowing and not knowing.

Once, during a particularly overwhelming time, I wrote a list of every unanswered question in my life.

It filled a page.

Then two.

Then three.

I stared at it, feeling small and frustrated, until I noticed something:

Every important moment of my life existed because of uncertainty.

Every risk.

Every discovery.

Every goodbye.

Every turning point.

If I had every answer, I would have lived a flat, predictable existence—without wonder, without awe, without change.

And that is when it finally made sense:

The questions were not failures in knowledge. They were invitations.

Invitations to grow.

To imagine.

To feel.

To search.

To be humbled.

To be curious.

To be human.

Some questions will follow us to our last breath, whispering softly with every step we take. Not to torment us, but to remind us that mystery is not the enemy of understanding—

it is the birthplace of wisdom.

And in the end, maybe we don’t need answers.

Maybe what we really need is the courage to keep asking.

MORAL

Not every question is meant to be solved. Some exist to guide us, shape us, and remind us that mystery is part of being human. Embracing uncertainty often leads us closer to truth than any answer ever could.