No Man is An Island

Now anxiety is the mark of spiritual insecurity. It is the fruit of unanswered questions. But questions cannot go unanswered unless they be first asked. And there is a far worse anxiety, a far worse insecurity, which comes from being afraid to ask the right questions- because they might turn out to have no answer. One of the moral diseases we communicate to one another in society comes from huddling together in the pale light of an insufficient answer to a question we are afraid to ask.

But there are other diseases also. There is the laziness that pretends to dignify itself by the name of despair, and that teaches us to ignore both the question and the answer. And there is the despair that dresses itself up as science of philosophy and amuses itself with clever answers to clever questions- none of which have anything to do with the problems of life.

Thomas Merton