Poems 2002

Your questions
are more important
than your answers,
more important
than the answers of others.

Answers are the caps on bottles
that are put on the shelf
to sit like dusty books
that don't even merit
a second look.

Yesterday's answers
are today's superstitions
to which fearful people cling,
afraid to create new definitions
for new conditions.

Decisions made by those who had answers
have led to the world's disasters,
spawned by self-righteousness and hate
leading history down dark alleys
with dead ends and no escape.

Decisions made by those who had questions
have moved humanity to new dimensions,
where progress and future possibilities
have opened doors of opportunities
and new solutions.

Your questions
are more important
than your answers,
more important
than the answers of others.

Questions come from your fullness,
from the gestation
of your imagination,
from the limitlessness
of your curiosity.

Questions come from dissatisfaction
with monotony and stagnation,
from discontent with the status quo;
they are the wheels
that get you where you want to go.

Answers are a danger —
whether from friend or stranger —
unless they stimulate the urge to investigate
greater truths which you feel
lie beyond the veil of the known.

The "absolute" is not absolute
unless dynamic, ever-expanding and alive,
not an elixir gulped
from closed and ancient bottles
with fancy labels and false claims.

Are your questions
more important
than your answers?
Are they more important
than the answers of others?

November 3, 2002
© 2002 Richard Sidy