The Question That Just Wanted Me to Sit Down
I used to think my frustration with unanswered questions meant something negative about me.
That I wasn’t sharp enough. Not insightful enough. That other people were arriving at conclusions while I was still circling the parking lot, wondering if I had even found the right building.
It felt like a deficit. Like everyone else had been handed the answer key and I was still staring at the first question, wondering if I had misread it. Or if the test was in a different language. Or if there even was a test and I had simply wandered into the wrong room and was too embarrassed to leave.
And if I’m honest, I didn’t just dislike questions.
I was afraid of them.
Not because they were difficult, but because they didn’t end. They didn’t offer closure. No tidy conclusion. No reassuring moment where someone stamps the page and says, correct, you may proceed.
Instead, they opened something.
Space.
And that space felt unfamiliar, so I deemed it unsafe. Like stepping off solid ground and realizing there is nothing underneath you. Like being gently but unmistakably pushed out of a rocket into open space, where there are no edges, no boundaries, no clear direction back.
Just vastness.
And me, floating there, thinking: this cannot be how this is supposed to go.
Maybe you know the feeling.
So I resisted. I tried to outthink the question. Close it quickly. Land somewhere, anywhere, just to stop the falling. I had material prepared. I had practiced. I had notes. I was ready to deliver an answer to a question that, it turns out, had not asked for one.
And somewhere in that reluctant surrender, something changed.
Not the kind of change with a clean explanation hiding just around the corner. Not even the hard kind that feels impossible until suddenly it isn’t. The other kind. The kind that opens instead of closes.
(Don’t ask me how or when.)
And before you ask, yes, I recognize the irony.
Those are exactly the kinds of questions I mean. Not the ones with answers hiding just around the corner. The other kind. The ones that open instead of close.
Because it turns out the question isn’t demanding an answer.
It’s asking for something else entirely.
Attention.
Not the frantic kind that tries to solve and conclude, but the quieter kind. The kind that comes and sits down. That lingers. That wonders without rushing. That is willing, even for a moment, to puzzle instead of pronounce.
The question isn’t a problem to fix. It’s a place to be.
And somewhere in that staying, something unexpected happens. The question softens. Or maybe I do. Either way, what was once a standoff becomes something else entirely.
Patient in a way I find a little annoying. Though if I’m honest, I’m learning patience too. And in that patience, something shifts. The question and I stop being adversaries. It stops feeling like something to defeat and starts feeling like something to be with. Not a problem to solve but a companion to keep.
And what it offers in return is not resolution. It’s something quieter. A willingness to sit with uncertainty and ambiguity, without demanding that they explain themselves. A trust that what the question holds within it will unfold, in its own time, in its own way. Not forced. Not rushed.
Just received.
The revelation begins to unfold from within the question itself, as if it had been there all along. It was not waiting for brilliance. Not for speed. Not for the right combination of words.
Just for presence.
Which, I’ll admit, made me smile. All that preparation. All that straining forward. And the question just wanted me to sit down.
Maybe it wants the same from you.
Because here is what I have found in that sitting: the pressure to figure it all out loosens its grip. The urgency fades. What once felt like a test begins to feel more like an invitation. The question remains, but it is no longer empty.
It is alive.
And strangely, that is enough. Not because everything is resolved, but because we are no longer trying to escape the place where resolution hasn’t been.
We are not behind.
We are just being asked to stay a little longer in the part where things are still becoming.
And it turns out, that is exactly where we were supposed to be.
Until next time, sit down.
Jocelyn
If you're learning to sit with the question too, pull up a chair.
If someone came to mind, send it their way. The more the merrier in the parking lot.