Contact us at: whispernthunder1@gmail.comThe Boy Who Asked Important Questions
~ Joelle Clark
There was once a little boy named Eli who carried
questions the way other children carried marbles,
bright, rolling things he couldn’t help but take out
and examine.
“Why do shadows follow us?”
“What makes people kind?”
“Who decides what’s fair?”
He asked them everywhere: in the market, on the school steps, in the middle of dinner. Some grown‑ups sighed or waved him away. They said he thought too much, or that he should wait until he was older to wonder about such things.
But his grandmother never hurried him. She would pat the seat beside her, settle her knitting in her lap, and say, “Ask me, Eli. Let’s think about it together.”
She didn’t always have perfect answers, but she always had honest ones. When he asked why people argued, she told him that sometimes hearts get tangled. When he asked why the stars seemed so far away, she said that some things are distant from us, so we remember to look up. And when he asked what makes a person good, she smiled and said, “The courage to keep asking questions.”
Eli listened. He thought. He grew.
As the years passed, the questions he carried became bigger, heavier, questions about justice, about how to help those who had been forgotten, about how to make the world kinder than he found it. And every time he returned to his grandmother’s porch, she greeted him with the same gentle patience.
One evening, long after his legs had grown long and his voice had deepened, Eli sat beside her again. The sun was low, painting the sky in soft gold.
“Grandma,” he said quietly, “do you think I’ll ever find the answers I’m looking for?”
She reached for his hand, her fingers warm and steady.
“My boy,” she said, “you were never meant to find all the answers. You were meant to ask the questions that help others find theirs. That’s how change begins.”
And she was right.
In time, Eli became a man who helped his community, who listened deeply, who challenged unfairness, who inspired others to wonder and to care. People said he was wise, thoughtful, a leader. But Eli always said the same thing.
“I just kept asking important questions. My grandmother taught me how.”
And somewhere, in a quiet house with a creaking porch, his grandmother smiled, because she had always known he would do great things for the people.