Most people think they are betting on roulette.
They are not.
They are betting on a question.
One person asks whether the ball will land on red.
Another asks whether it will be an even number.
Another chooses a single number.
Another chooses an entire column.
The wheel does not care which question was asked.
It spins once.
The ball falls once.
That single event settles every wager simultaneously.
Not only the wagers that were placed, but many that were never consciously made.
No one may have bet on double zero.
Yet the wheel still answers whether double zero appeared.
No one may have cared about the third column.
The wheel answers that as well.
Reality is more generous than inquiry.
It produces more answers than anyone thought to request.
The same appears to be true of experience.
During an event, attention is usually confined to the question already in mind.
The observer watches only that wager.
Did the meeting go well?
Was there mutual interest?
Was the decision correct?
The event concludes.
Years later, the same experience can be revisited.
The event has not changed.
The questions have.
The observer is no longer examining the wager.
The observer is examining the table.
Questions emerge that did not exist before.
How did the participants respond?
What assumptions were being carried?
What changed in each person?
What remained unchanged?
The remarkable discovery is that the event had already answered those questions.
No one had yet thought to ask them.
A shared experience also resolves questions belonging to other people.
Those questions may never become known.
One participant wonders whether another is approachable.
Another wonders whether silence is preferable.
Another is testing courage.
Another is seeking reassurance.
The same event settles all of them.
Each participant leaves carrying answers to private questions.
Most remain invisible to everyone else.
Perhaps memory is not the storage of events.
Perhaps memory is the gradual expansion of the questions that can be asked of them.
The roulette wheel stopped long ago.
The data has not changed.
Only the observer’s questions have.
And with each new question, the same event reveals another answer that had been present from the beginning.
Perhaps wisdom is not accumulating more experiences.
Perhaps it is learning that every experience answered far more questions than anyone knew to ask.
WE&P by: EZorrillaMc&Co.
Travel in Life 