How I became a child again

I ask: “Why?” Mom answers, and I ask again: “Why?” Mommy answers: “Because it is so.”

And me again: “But why is that so?” This is how it started, getting to know the world. Later I started school and asking was harder for me. We were learning and writing exams. However, this does not mean that I did not want to understand things better.

Some time passed, and things started to change. I stopped asking and started seeking clear and true answers. I was convinced that everything was knowable. This was also influenced by high school, where there was only one correct definition and one term to be used, or else it did not count. This culminated in my last year of high school and first year at university. Looking back, I realized that my opinions about history and politics were strong, and I used to have heated debates even with my closest people, despite generally trying to avoid conflict.

Something changed in my second year at university, but it was a gradual change rather than a quick turnaround. I shifted from "I'm convinced that" to "I think that" to "I'm thinking about." It was a return to a world where there were no given truths. I started to ask, "Why should it be so?" or rather, "Is this question truly answerable?" And if it is not, "does it make any sense to deal with it?" Sometimes it does make sense to me, but there are also things that I used to pay a lot of attention to in the past that I no longer see the point of.

As for the answer to the question, "Which things are truly knowable?" today, I say, "I don't know."