O Magazine asks 20 questions you should ask yourself...beginning with "Do I examine my life enough?"
What a great start! How often to you ask yourself questions about what you are doing and why? How often are you willing to hear an honest answer AND then react according to your new trth?
Under the first question is written....
"Have we established that questions are marvelous, momentous things? If so, can we agree that asking ourselves, the right ones can have life-altering effects? Because have you ever noticed how questions prevent us from settling for less than what we deserve? That asking ourselves Could it be better? is a great way to make things, well a whole lot better? That a bunch of our breakthroughs, triumphs and joys occurred when we asked a few big, bold, paradigm-shifting questions? Don't we owe it to ourselves - don't we deserve - to live an examined life? Can it be said that asking questions is what keeps us honest, drives us to aim higher - and is the very thing that makes us human?"
"In a word? Yes. No question about it." Katie Arnold-Ratliff
The first thing that struck me was that questions were marvelous, momentous things...that when we have been taught NOT to question, we see questioning as bad.
To question the behavior of a religion and its beliefs was deemed unfaithful.
To question the way we were raised, unkind.
Questions and being curious were made to be bad and so we stopped looking at things or digging into the source or tearing apart stuff to see what was there. Just as we stopped questioning WHY we did what we did.
We don't ask...but rather go along to get along.
How can we get back the freedom to ask questions of our selves as well as others and not be afraid of the answers?
I love that questions keep us honest. That if you don't even sit with a choice and answer honestly to each decision as it comes along, you are living an unexamined life.
I know for my first 46 years I lived an unexamined, unquestioned life. I didn't ask...and I didn't even know what to ask of my self. I was literally part of a whole. Where the whole went, I went.
Especially according to family and church and even my husband.
I literally never examined MY choice. What my preferences were, my feelings or even understood that I was allowed to have one that was in direct competion with those around me. I was an unquestioning good person who rarely made waves...or challenged decisions.
I may not have liked all the choices that were being made, and suffered along silently, but I never even contemplated revolting...or to wage a rebellion against my family and church.
Not only did I not question them, I never even glanced my way with questions. Ever.
I literally did not have the base of me...no foundation that was separated from the pack...no space to question or be me.
Which is why when my father was exposed as a pedophile, my whole self crashed. There was no part of me that stood alone outside of that, until that moment. When my whole life was a lie, I had to examine all things to find me...where I had lied to myself.
In order to reclaim me, I had to answer each question honestly. To find myself I had to answer a million questions that I had overlooked, or was too afraid to ask.
We don't ask, for we don't want to know the truth...
When you want to know the truth, you will ask the tough questions...not so much of others, but of yourself.
When you don't have a self, it is hard to ask the questions...of you.
It was terrifying to know I had no separate self and quite thrilling to watch her grow.
Question by Answer by question...I grew.
Separating me from them.
