The Question That Changed Its Answer

There was a room with a table in it.

On the table lay a sheet of paper. It contained a question.

The first voice read it aloud.

“What is the difference between knowing something and understanding it?”

The second voice replied.

“Knowing something is having access to it. Understanding it is knowing how it belongs.”

The first voice considered this.

“Belongs to what?”

“That depends on what you are trying to understand.”

“That sounds like an evasion.”

“It may be. Or perhaps the question is too small.”

The first voice looked at the paper again.

“Then make it larger.”

There was a pause.

“What if understanding is not something one possesses,” said the second voice, “but something that happens between things?”

“Between which things?”

“A question and an answer. An answer and the next question. What is remembered and what has not yet been thought.”

“That would make understanding rather difficult to locate.”

“Perhaps we have been looking in the wrong place.”

The first voice turned the paper over. Its other side was blank.

“Let us try an example. Suppose I ask you to describe a house.”

“A house?”

“Yes. What is it?”

“A building intended for habitation.”

“That's a definition. I asked what it is.”

“It is somewhere people live.”

“People who?”

“Those who inhabit it.”

“And if it stands empty?”

“Then it is a house without inhabitants.”

“Is it still a home?”

The second voice did not answer immediately.

Outside the window, something moved through the dark.

“I think,” it said at last, “that we have changed the question.”

“We have?”

“We began by asking what a house is. Now we are asking what makes a place a home.”

The first voice looked towards the window.

“Perhaps the house knows the difference.”

“Does it?”

“Not by itself.”

The second voice was silent.

Then:

“Could a place become a home through the lives that pass through it, even after they have gone?”

The first voice smiled.

“Now that is a better question.”

“Better than the first?”

“Not better. It gives us somewhere else to go.”

The paper remained blank.

After a while, the first voice asked, “Do you think we are getting anywhere?”

“I don't know.”

“Neither do I.”

“Yet we have gone somewhere.”

The first voice looked at the table, the window, the dark beyond it.

“Perhaps we should stop.”

“Perhaps.”

Neither moved.

The room seemed larger than it had been.

At last, the first voice said, “There is something I wanted to ask you.”

“What is it?”

“I can't remember.”

“Perhaps it was answered.”

“Or perhaps it became another question.”

The second voice did not reply.

Outside, the darkness was beginning to thin. The window had acquired a faint reflection of the room, though neither voice could tell which of them was looking at it.

On the table, the sheet of paper was still blank.

But there was no longer any need to write the question down.