‘The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer, but they think they have. So they stop being curious. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.’ ~ Ken Kesey

Why is the human mind always trying to make sense of things? Why do so many of us yearn for answers? Why am sitting here pondering this very concept?

I’ve been enchanted by the mystery of life from an early age. I think we all have. The faeries that danced with me in the long grass behind the house were more real than the disconnected, often challenging, social interactions I forced my way through at school. I never felt the need to seek answers from these ‘imaginary’ friends, I was happy to simply soak up their magic.

As an adult I can recall times where my search for ‘the answer’ has become obsessive and destructive. When thought loops steeped in blame, judgement, shame and regret suffocated my vibrant enthusiasm for life. Meditation guided me out. Through regular, dedicated practice I’m learning to accept one simple, profound truth. My thoughts are ‘real but not necessarily true’ as Tara Brach puts it. I don’t get stuck in these obsessive, answer seeking thought loops anymore. This doesn’t mean that I don’t experience unease, hurt, sadness, jealousy or grief. The emotions don’t stop. However I’m much more willing to feel into them, to give them love so they can transmute and move through me rather than festering like an enraged pimple pulsating beneath the skin.

So now I’m falling back in love with the mystery.

I’m lying in the grass with my new best friends, a family of kangaroos and three kookaburras (one of which I rescued from some netting the other day and she’s kept close by ever since). I wonder if they obsess about what other members of their species think about them or their perceived shortcomings. From their relaxed and playful demeanour I would guess no.

Maybe life is a funhouse! Maybe there are no answers. Maybe it’s all a big cosmic playground for us to enjoy. As Micheal Singer writes, ‘we are sitting on a planet spinning round in the middle of absolutely nowhere. We are floating in empty space in a universe that goes on forever. We are going to die anyway. Things are going to happen anyway. We might as well enjoy the ride.’