There is nothing as powerful as a
question. Answers close everything down. Questions open everything up.
In our efforts to improve our
lives, our careers, our relationships, and our creative output it’s important
to spend some quality time with a handful of good questions.
What really matters to me?
There are so many conflicting
demands made on our attention. It’s easy to feel overwhelmed. Before you know
it, the day is gone. And what do you have to show for it? Every moment requires
a decision in the face of an infinite array of possibilities. The moments turn
to hours, the hours turn to days, and before you know it, another year is gone.
And you never know how many of those you have left. The little things add up
and become the whole. Our life is the sum of our decisions. “How we spend our
days,” wrote Annie Dillard, “is, of course, how we spend our lives.” It’s
vitally important that we by any means necessary clarify our values and order
our priorities. There is no time to waste time. Make room for what really
matters. As Stephen Covey says, put first things first. Whatever doesn’t fit
gets dropped. Learn how to be o.k. with this.
A good way to re-order your
priorities is by asking this next question.
Why am I doing this?
We do things for a lot of
different reasons, some valid, some empty. Start being more careful about what
you say yes to. Honestly assess the quality and value of the experiences you
sign up for. Are you a thoughtful steward of your time, talent and treasure?
What are you getting out of this? A tangible benefit? The joy of contributing
to a worthy cause? Do these actions help cement a relationship that is
important to me? Or am I doing this just to curry favor and feed my ego? There
are no hard and fast rules here. Again, the question is so much more important,
so much more vitally alive than the answer. When we live in the why, we stay open to the flashes of
intuition and insight that guide us through the challenging terrain of motive.
What do we owe each other?
We do not live alone, no matter
how isolated we feel. Our lives are inexorably bound up in the lives of
everyone and everything else. We breathe the same air, share the same space and
support each other in innumerable ways. Our decision making needs to begin in
the realization of our complete and utter interdependency. From that foundation
it becomes clear that our society comes with a contract – the moral obligation
to take responsibility for co-creating a world that works for everyone. That
being said, we cannot offer ourselves up as martyrs on the altars of other
people’s self-absorption. Finding the line between altruism and self-love is
the work of every thinking man and woman. Compassionate action must be our
guiding principle, including compassion for ourselves – why should we be
excluded? Again, there are no hard and fast rules, just a formless, living
awareness of our interdependency and a simultaneous acknowledgment of our
personal liberty and responsibility. We cannot save everyone we meet from their
own bad choices. But we also know that our fates are intertwined, and a blind
eye and closed fist is a miserable response that shuts us off from our own
happiness.
What is happiness?
When you keep it simple,
happiness is simply feeling comfortable in your own skin. It’s a word we use to
describe a general sense of well-being born of a thousand mothers – external
circumstances, biology, the actions of others and our own free-will decision to
choose happiness in spite of all those things.
Without putting too fine a point on it, we all know what happiness is,
yet we must keep this question open and alive if we are to move through the
minefield of the myriad conflicting demands placed on us. We have to develop a subtle understanding of
long-term self-interest. The willingness to sacrifice momentary, fleeting
pleasures for long-term well-being is the watermark of maturity. Discipline,
mastery and self-restraint create the conditions in which our deepest and most
authentic joy can thrive. For Aristotle, happiness is the result of
risk-taking, hard work, and the courageous cultivation of our innate potential.
Having the will power to nurture our own excellence and avoid the dissipation
of trivial pursuits is an essential component of the well-lived life. And yet
we must avoid thinking of happiness as a distant goal, an endpoint achievable
only after we arrange all of the outer elements of our lives in accord with our
whimsical demands. Nothing outside of us makes
us happy. Happiness is a decision. It is quality of being, not a passive
response to favorable stimuli. Pay
attention to the subtle, fluid nature of your own emotional weather systems.
Know that while there are always going to be ups and downs, it is possible to
move in the general direction of happiness. One of the best ways to do that is
to ask yourself this next question.
What am I?
Not Who am I? but What am I? Who
am I? simply elicits a long list of labels and social definitions – man, woman,
child, son, daughter, brother, sister, husband, wife, college student, job
description, nationality, introvert, extrovert, political affiliation, ad
infinitum. When the list is done, you’re still no closer to the real question. What’s
beneath all of those masks? Don’t let the brevity or the childlike simplicity
of the question fool you. This is a tough one. I know this sounds strange, but don’t
let the mind rush to an answer – it will gladly offer up all of the usual
suspects: a soul, a body, a spirit, a mass of protoplasm. The mind is incapable
of answering this question – how could it?
The mind is a function of the self, not its source. Asking the mind to
define the mind is like asking your eyes to see your eyes. Confused? That’s the
point. The mind is out of its depth here. Like a Zen koan, the question Who am
I? nudges us through the veil that divides our surface consciousness from the
depths of our inner witness, a profound and wordless knowing that hums with the
energy of Being itself. How can a wave
know that it is the entirety of the sea while it is utterly identified with the
wave-state?
Again, as much as we long to run
into the arms of every awaiting answer, it is far more powerful to simply
remain in the uncertainty created by the imposition of the question itself. As
magnets attract iron, questions attract insight. Answers, on the other hand, attract argument.
Socrates lived his life, and ultimately gave
his life, in the pursuit of self-knowledge. The dialogues of Plato that tell
his story are masterful testimonies to the power of inquiry. Socrates wasn’t
interested in cataloging the qualities of things; it was their essence he was
after – beauty, truth, justice, and the good. And most importantly, what are we
in the face of this eternal mystery?
Learn to trust the authority of
your own inner voice. There is wisdom in the field of awareness, available to
anyone willing to become silent enough to hear it. Take the time to listen. If
you aren’t already, begin journaling. Take these questions into your prayer and
meditation. In one way or another, make it a daily practice to spend time in
the contemplation of the five questions.
