Childhood Riddles

As someone who spends a fair amount of time in airplanes I fortunately get the chance to indulge my love of reading. At the moment I am reading "That Old Cape Magic" by Richard Russo. He writes with a style which makes me stop and ponder every once and a while; an admirable trait for any author. This latest novel made me think about the riddles of our childhoods and why growing up doesn't always solve them.

A wise old friend of mine explained it to me simply that their are no answers to some of our questions and I have had to reluctantly accept this maxim many a time instead of pursuing an answer to a question any further. My friend was in his late 80s when he told me this and had seen some terrible suffering in Europe during WWII. He had no answers for all that had happened in his life and had come to realize that it is sometimes better to simply accept things as they are and to quit questioning.

This all makes me wonder if as children we had adopted this stoic attitude how different our lives would have been. I guess the wisdom is in knowing when to develop this attitude and in the meantime hold out a chance that our childhood riddles may one day be answered.

The riddles of my childhood centered around the usual time worn concerns: why someone had died or moved away, or had changed their opinion of me or I had changed my opinion of them. When you are young with a great expanse of time hopefully before you it is easy to believe that a plausible answer might present itself. As we grow up though we begin to see how this might not be the case, and how tragedies will keep occurring for no good reason. I saw this again the other day with the shooting in an Arizona shopping center. We might well never understand the man's motivation, just like we will never know why Lee Harvey Oswald had wanted to shoot President Kennedy. I believe Oswald acted alone and was a deeply troubled individual. Though all during my childhood there was the riddle in many people's minds as to whether he acted alone. Some people still see a plot but after all this time this to me appears unlikely. It's too hard to keep a secret like that for so long. It will just remain one of those childhood riddles that growing up hasn't solved.