Sometimes you gotta ask...

“Judge a man by his questions rather than by his answers.”

- François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire), French philosopher

There is little doubt a good question is often better than a great answer!

Getting the right question, however, is not so easy as it seems.

While we often think of ourselves as question askers, Elizabeth Johnson in Quest for the Living God says:

“…our questions, driven by profound yearning to know,

are made possible by the very structure of human nature…

human persons don’t just ask questions: we are (emphasis

mine) a question in search of the fullness of truth.”

Pretty heady stuff, considering the “…fullness of truth…” is like the ever-receding horizon slipping away at the speed with which we try to approach it. Nonetheless, her comments are a reflection of the universal nature of wanting to know more.

Starting somewhere…

You know how a thought begins to formulate in your mind, and you just can’t quite capture the thing with clarity?

I had been thinking about the tragic events in the world (that we know about), and the people who find themselves in the gravest of circumstance.  Stimulated by the happenings in Paris, many other similar occurrences found themselves in the forefront of my mind related to the utter inhumanity our species inflicts upon one another.

Yet there is resilience to the human spirit that appears to transcend the darkness…to seek the better…to find hope in the face of despair.

Each of us has found ourselves in ‘places’ or ‘circumstances’ that seemed inescapable, and yet somehow, we persevered.

How do we do that?

When I find myself unable to express things floating through my head, I turn to friends to help me sort through them. In this case, it was my friend John in Canada. During his career as a Diplomat in the Canadian Foreign Service to Africa, he had seen and experienced much.

I sent him a note.

The email…

After a general greeting, the vaguely formulated question began:

”What are the kinds of things you think about? …I suppose I am simply curious about the sorts of less than random thoughts that you find yourself visiting…. a thing [place] or two that you find yourself returning to on a moderately regular basis.”

John responded with a lovely note of gratitude for a life he had been presented with and embraced in a meaningful career serving others in foreign lands. He had indeed seen and experienced so many things.

I resonated deeply with his appreciation for having had an amazing journey, but it wasn’t exactly what I was after.

I hadn’t asked the right question, but it was a start.

The call…

The next day, I was on a call with Bill, my friend from San Diego.

When I lived in that city by the sea, he and I met weekly in the early morning hours before he began seeing patients in his busy practice.

We have found a way to continue the ‘open ended’ conversations via Skype on a moderately regular basis.

I ran the question by him…we talked about it…he wrote me back suggesting there were many things he might have done differently in his amazingly adventurous life.

I still had not formulated the question I had been ‘feeling.’

I responded, “Turn the corner…where do you go for strength?”

BINGO! Where do you go for strength? That is what I really wanted to ask!

Now I was getting somewhere.

Coffee break…

Once a week or so, Frank and I get together.  It was within a few days of my email to John, and the day after my note from, and response to, Bill.

Slipping into the passenger seat of his white SUV, I buckled up the seatbelt and said,

“I’ve been thinking about some stuff and wanted to run a couple of things by you.“

He nodded…I continued,

“When there have been dark times in your life, have there been anchors…places you have gone for strength…places that helped you weather the storm?”

“You don’t have to answer this now; I just wanted to plant the question.”

He glanced over, “I don’t need to think about it. Let’s just talk now.”

It didn’t take much for him to relate a story about and event in his life when he was embroiled in a very difficult situation. Somewhere during this crisis, he found and internalized the expression,

“I refuse to be a victim!”

This was not a new idea to him, but when it became actualized, the ‘volume’ of the unchanged circumstances completely changed by the words that had given him strength and protected his mind.

Visiting my neighbor…

Finally, or rather at this point in my quest, I felt like I was ready to ask my friend Gail the question. She had been in two extreme life-threatening situations. I was a little uncertain if I should ask, but she has a clarity that few people I know have. I knew if she took on the question I would get a thoughtful response….

I asked…she wrote:

“I must go back a few years to a time when pain dominated my life.  What was my anchor then?  What kept me choosing to live one more day?  It was HOPE.  There were periods of remission from pain: days, weeks, even months when the pain subsided and I could live a normal life.  So each day, as I sat in my recliner racked with pain, I was hoping that tomorrow would be a remission day.  That kept me going.  One day at a time…’

So what?...

Growing up, I was loaded to the gills with catch phrases, quotes from different people, clichés that seemed so…well so cliché.

Somewhere along the line…it was NOT in my youth, but decades later I came to realize that words actually have power.

By now I have asked this question to about six or seven people, and each one of them has given me a bit more than I thought I would get.

I am going to keep asking and refining it when necessary, because seeing how others manage ‘their worlds,’ helps me refine mine.

By the way, where do you go for strength when the sky is not so bright? What are your anchor points?

- ted