E. L. Doctorow, the famous American author, was mentoring a young writer who was very interested in understanding the secret of Doctorow’s celebrated literary success. The renowned author shocked the student when he shared his fundamental process for writing. He said:
Writing is like driving at night in the fog. You can only see down the road as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.
We navigate the questions of life just like a car navigates the road on a foggy night. Our exploration of those questions illuminates the path to unknown answers, just as headlights illuminate the road to an unknown destination.
It’s quite possible that in the last nine months of The Question, the only significant answers that we’ve discovered so far are:
- That the fog is really, really thick.
- That the destination is still very distant, and very unknown.
- That the drive itself is actually pretty interesting, even though you can’t really see where it may be leading. Perhaps that’s why it’s interesting.
The Question community is kind of like the car, and you and I together are driving the car, and we work the headlights.