I love questions.

I take them to work with me. I curl up with them at night under the duvet.

New ones have arrived when I open my eyes in the morning & like to tap me on the shoulder throughout the day to remind me that they are there. I have a book I record great questions in………..I never leave the house without at least one & probably at least 3 to keep me warm in winter

I’m never bored, or lonely. Questions can be like good friends, I have my favourites who have been with me for years & shape my life, like:

How do you know? …………………and…………………Is it true?

Here’s another that I return to again & again & always find in my suitcase when I go on holiday.

Who is this who lives in the centre of my chest?               Rumi.

Our lives are shaped by the questions we ask

(& I think also by the questions we refuse to ask)

As youngsters most of us are full of questions; the world & everything in it, & especially what people do…………is weird, wonderful, a mystery.

Then something happens to the questions we ask. Where do they go?

As adults, do we stop asking questions, do we stop forming them…………..or are we simply too busy, not interested or too jaded & overwhelmed to ask.

Little people always seem to expect that their answers can & will be answered. If not they’ll just keep asking, (a delightful habit on a crowded train!)

But it seems to me that at some point on the journey from little person to adult………..we stop believing that the questions we generate can be or will be answered. (You’d like to hope) …….that may be a mark of our maturity in terms of the kind of questions we ask………….but equally it may be a sad reflection of either our fear or our cynicism that they won’t be answered……or we’ll be thought a fool for asking or perhaps with some questions we know that we don’t really want to know the answer…..

There is courage in being able to articulate, face & share questions with another, especially the ones about ourselves. As a coach & trainer I am constantly awed by the kind of questions people will sit up straight & look in the eye.

‘When you look into abyss, the abyss also looks into you”, & it can pose some huge questions.

Why is it though that the really important questions we often only ask in the dead of night or when we’re afraid or facing an abyss? Wouldn’t it be easier if we could only remember how well acquainted we were with questions when we were little & just treat them as normal, no matter what clothes they’re wearing??

As adults, those of us fortunate enough to have work will in the course of our careers spend more hours at our jobs than we do at home, with friends or family. The person we are at work is the person we are effectively practicing becoming.

How well do you like that person? Is the kind of question I want to carry close to me.

What are the questions that wake you in the middle of the night?

David Whyte says that the questions that belong to us/are ours have ‘no right to go away‘ & deserve to be heard.

Another poet encourages us to hang out with our questions until the answers & the non-answers make some sense.

One of my favourite questions was penned by Einstein. A seriously clever man, I may not understand much of his pivotal work, but this question I do.

Is the world a friendly place?

Einstein believed that the experience of our lives may, to a large extend depend upon how we answer that question………….because the answer will dictate now we approach the world, & every thing in it. I don’t think that Einstein was being superficial here, or simplistic. I think he’s inviting us to wonder about our fundamental perspective on the world & relationships.

The way we answer that question for ourselves will affect what we project, or what ‘leaks’ from us in our interactions. It will colour what we expect from & how we perceive the behaviour of others, which will itself have a bearing on how others will behave towards us.

Ask yourself the question & notice what your answer is………..Does it fit you?

Is the world a friendly place?

Is your workplace a friendly place?

Is your family a friendly place?

Are you a friendly self-accepting place to yourself?

Dante’s famous book the Inferno carries that great line:

In the middle of the road of my life I awoke to find myself in a dark wood where the true way was wholly lost.

What kind of questions was that wanderer asking or not asking that he was so surprised to find himself wholly lost?

There is apparently a Persian curse that says:

“May all your dreams immediately come true……..”

At first look………….it sounds like several lottery wins all in one go……. but then I see how that would be awful, after the first 5 minutes!

I feel the same about questions. I never want all of them to be answered. I want to know that some of them can’t be. In my life, I have awoken in the middle of more than one dark wood & no doubt will do so again before my time is up, but I’ve never been wholly lost because I’ve always had a good question to keep me company.

But most of all I never want to run out of them & I will resolutely cling to my own on-going answer to the one Einstein posed.

Why? Because I prefer the person I am when I answer the question the way I do.