What's in a question?

Did you ever have a question that you were dying to be asked?  Why did you want to be asked that question?  If it was in class, you were probably anxious to show off (if you were dying to be asked it again) or show the teacher that you WERE paying attention in class.  If that question was a marriage proposal, you were probably waiting to be asked it because it meant they wanted to marry you as much as you wanted to marry them, a true display of commitment.  For others, they were dying (sometimes literally) to be asked if they needed help.  Or if they wanted that position that just became available.  Whatever.  Generally, there's something they get by giving the answer.

I've got a question, somewhat like that too.  I don't know if I can honestly say though that there's something I want to get out of it so much as give.  There's an answer in me that's bursting to get out.  I want to be asked because I know the answer, and it's an answer that's deep within the heart and soul of me.  It's the reason for my continued existence, it's my testimony, it's my story, it's my essence.  It's been dwelling in me for two decades or so now, but only in the past half-decade or so did I realize the yearning to be asked this question.

But it's not an answer I can voluntarily give.  I have to be asked the question.  And you can't ask "What's the question?" and expect me to tell you.  There's a necessity that the asking of the question be unprompted.

Oh I've been asked questions that danced close to the question.  Some quite close, but never the question itself.  And it's an answer I want to share with the world, but am unable to do so.

I somehow suspect we've all got at least one question like that.  An answer you want to spill, but it's so guarded and personal and deep in the inmost being of you, that you cannot share it unless someone asks that question.  The key that is not only long enough to reach into your heart and soul, but fits so perfectly that the contents stored within would gush out with the opening of those cardiological and cranial cupboard doors.  And you just never get asked that question.

Crazy, right?  In our era of mass and instant communication, you'd think we'd get bombarded with so many messages, many questions, that one of them would HAVE to be that one question, right?  I mean, as the number of monkeys and number of typewriters increase steadily towards infinity, so do the actual odds that one of them will bang out Hamlet.  And yet, the question remains unasked and the answer closeted within us. 

May we all get asked our question, the one that allows our mute swan to rise up within us and sing its solitary note, thereby justifying our entire existence and giving us a sense of completed purpose.