You will never know until you ask.
My firstborn daughter and I were having a conversation. During that conversation she asked some questions. When she heard the answers, she asked some more questions. when she heard those answers she asked some more questions. Then she stopped, because she felt she was irritating me with the questions. That was because she was irritating me with the questions and I didn’t do a good job of hiding the irritation. Yet when she stopped and I discovered why she stopped, I too stopped.
I took a few deep breaths (not overtly) and in those breaths I composed myself with a few thoughts:
(Breathe in) I have the privilege of engaging in a conversation with my daughter.
(Breathe out) I have a responsibility to make the conversation as constructive as possible.
(Breathe in) Why is she asking so many questions and not accepting what she’s told?
(Breathe out) She obviously wants to get clarity for herself, however clear it might be to me.
(Breathe in) It is a privilege to have this conversation with my daughter, I am not the authority and comprehensive source of all knowledge. There’s no shame in that.
(Breathe out) This privilege can be fun again and she can know what I can share at this time.
With those breathes I encouraged her to keep on asking questions. I didn’t have conclusive answers for her and I didn’t seek to have those answers. Sometimes I encouraged her to consider why she was asking the question she was – that got her thinking too. By the time the conversation ended I was assured that at least we had a good conversation and it would not end there and then.
Something about that conversation reminded me that asking questions in the quest of knowledge will give us varying degrees of knowledge even if that knowledge is merely that we cannot find the answer to the question from the person we ask. It should not stop us from asking, though.
Likewise in life there may be questions that are asked that should get us asking those same questions for ourselves. No one alive in the flesh on this planet at this time, to the best of my knowledge has all knowledge. We are all just finding our way. Some of us have got a good routine going to help us negotiate certain questions. Indeed some of us have bought into a complex of constructs that help us navigate through those questions. We have bought into it only on the thinking that because it’s alright for others, it might be alright for us. Even on that assumption that it is alright, that doesn’t mean that it addresses the question conclusively or even correctly.
Some of us have bought into complexes of constructs that have actively deterred us from asking certain uncomfortable questions that expose grave flaws and failings in those constructs. For example, ask a ‘bible-believing’ Christian about certain well-ingrained practices and they might get stuck after wheeling out the answer from tradition.
I don’t see the benefit in being a nuisance by being known for asking questions for the sake of it. I especially don’t see the point in asking the question if you know it will cause unnecessary conflict and damage to relationships.
Yet the unquestioned life is not a worthwhile life. Much progress and growth has taken place on the individual and communal level by asking questions.
After all, you will never know until you ask.
(Photo by Yiran Ding on Unsplash)
For His Name’s Sake
Shalom
C. L. J. Dryden
Life With CD 