“The answer is never the answer. What’s really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you’ll always be seeking. I’ve never seen anybody really find the answer – they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, to evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer.”
Ken Kesy

For all the intricacies of ideology and political belief, Washington DC is a very pragmatic town. It’s all about getting things done (which seems a little off, what with the constant dog-and-pony show that we see on the news), people working every day toward getting results. They are often working at odds with each other – that’s why it all seems so counterproductive at times – but they are not thinking about advancing beliefs as much as advancing their specific agendas. Most of them.

It’s important to realize that there is more to all of this than just “getting something done.” I wonder what answers we could find if we spent more time chasing the mystery than cataloguing our action items and tallying our wins and losses.

There may be a little more Zen here than I’m equipped to adequately describe. For now, it is enough to try to find the connections between the mystery and the effects it has on everything else I do. Answers are everywhere.