Play with Questions

Transcript

I’d like to talk to you about playing with questions.

So many times in an interview you will hear me say something. Maybe a question which is a little unexpected or I might say like in the early interviews “Let me ask a stupid question.”

But these questions are not stupid exactly, they are innocent questions which is a slightly different thing.

Well maybe an entirely different thing.

These questions are questions that address the assumptions that we have about life.

Like when we say “For the first time in years I felt hope.”

We all assume that we know what hope feels like. We know what it feels like. We all assume we mean the same thing when we say that. When I asked Georgia cat that question, you can go back to that interview and listen.

And I asked her, what is that? What is hope? What did it feel like to have hope?

And she reached into her brain and came out with this wonderful stunning brilliant answer, this description of what it feels like to have hope, to be hopeful.

It’s something perhaps we never imagined it or perceived it or sensed it in quite that way.

But once we can articulate it or have it articulated by somebody, suddenly we might become concious of those things which were previously hidden to us.

Those sensations which were just below the surface, just out of view. On the borders of our periphery. Perhaps they have always been with us, and now having come into view we might have some control over them or at least enjoy them more thoroughly.

So I think its really important to ask these questions. Many times people come to me as clients or as friends and it seems like they will get involved in a rant or they will tell me all these things that are going on in their lives and I will be like hmm, what about this?

These questions that we haven’t thought to ask ourselves because we are in a sort of trance, so focused on what seems to be important in the moment that we haven’t stopped to question what is it about it that is so important. Why is it that you want to continue doing this?

And sometimes its good to just let that trance play out.

I remember once I was very determined about writing a particular essay I conceived after an LSD trip or something like this.

My friend Link asked me “why is it so important for you to write this thing?”

I’m like “I just want to do it, okay?”

He said “Fair enough.”

Sometimes something comes up in your life and you are very certain in that moment that its a good idea.

Maybe you play that out.

Maybe a lot of the time when we feel certainty, its actually just the dress of truth, its not really that important.

When we think we really have to do something and we think about something in a certain way, or as we find with many autoexigente people have that trait.

We find we believe we cannot do something unless we force ourselves or put pressure on ourselves.

Along we come ready to question, what if there is a different way? What if there is another way to look at this? What else could you believe about your work that doesn’t involve you suffering?

Perhaps a way to look at things that enables you to be joyful and empowered. And in fact even more productive than you were making demands for yourself. When you were saying you must, you must, you must.

Now with those beautiful question, with the power of our insight. With those questioning of assumptions, questioning of foundations.

That Tower of Babel quickly falls and we find ourselves in a new form of civilization. Thank you for reflecting on your assumptions, on your presuppositions of your life. Thank you for exploring them, thank you for asking others key questions in a nice welcoming way.

In a way that invites them to explore, take pause and suddenly feel those treasured gifts which were hidden.