Ever Wonder? Ask Questions and Live Into Answers

Leave it to Kathy Sierra to take a common meme and turn it on its head: "Imagine you want to get to know someone and you can ask only five questions. What would you ask? What would you most want to know?"

Do you ever wonder about other people? Yourself? I believe it to be a crucial skill in business and life to be inquisitive. (I tend to observe more than ask finding that people reveal themselves more in their doing and being, than saying and telling.)

When I was in Sri Lanka this past February, most people were naturally inquisitive and the top 5 questions I'd be asked whether I was visiting with a monk, hotel servant or insurance executive were:

1. Where are you from?
2. What brings you to Sri Lanka?
3. Are you married?
4. Do you have children?
5. Are you Buddhist, Christian or a free-thinker?

The questions were quite different than I was used to answering in America, and they opened up the conversation territory broader than just how I paid the rent into place, purpose, family, religion.

I started living in questions in 2002 when all my answers started leaving me high and dry in 2001 (yeah, you noticed the lag there - hmmm, I'm stubborn). More than what five things don't you know about me, I began to inquire around things I didn't even know about me. So what were my blind spots? What did I not know I didn't know?

Being clear and committed around a theme or vision for 2007 isn't that simple if we haven't asked ourselves a few questions first.

So in order to sow the seeds for 2007, I'll plant a flurry of questions over the next several days that I've found particularly helpful for myself. And then after a few days I'll go back and re-publish my own highly individual answers. (They're questions that everyone will answer completely differently.)

I invite you to write down the answers (comment or if you want to share via private email entirely optional, or can be just you and your journal) because I have found that I live into my writing. When I was pretty broke a few weeks back (things are much better since I got over my fear of titheing when there's not much to spare), I couldn't afford a new journal so I went scouring through my bookcase in case I had an unused journal tucked away.

I did find a journal with three used pages, and the rest was blank. The journal was titled Clarity Quest notebook, and dated 1/6/02. I'd just moved out of the house with the sauna, the redwood siding, the yellow lab that loved to run in the Wasatch Mountains and fetch sticks, and the husband and into a room at my friend Sandra's home. The startup I'd been CTO of had imploded - closed its doors doesn't convey the totality of the situation nearly as well - almost to that day one year prior.

So I read the three pages in that journal written on the feast day of epiphany in 2002 on this Dec 9th. The words begin: "I want to be..." and is a description of a future vision for my life. When I finished reading, I realize I'd lived into my writing. Lived into that vision, and much more. (I'll share the three pages on January Sixth.)

So in her post Kathy asks her five questions. And I particularly loved the sixth: Write--and answer--one more question that YOU would ask someone.

Try that one yourself.

Answer these questions as quickly as your keyboard or pen allows you. Don't think. Go with the first thing and just keep on writing. Don't go over 15-20 minutes (time it).

I also adored this No. 6 question that Jacob Thurman shared in the comments:

"When was the last time you let nature, art, or some other beautiful thing move you to tears?" For me, it was watching a play - Peter Schaffer's Amadeus. I had been involved as the "music expert" in putting on the play, and so had seen many rehearsals, but the final dress rehearsal, with lights and costumes and everything, was magical. When Mozart died and Costanze's cries coincided with the height of the Lacrymosa from Mozart's mass, I cried. And it was good. - Jacob Thurman

Try that one too.

Bonus: This Rilke quote haunted me most of 2002 and 2003 - but Rilke has that provocative way of seeping into you. He's probably my favorite poet. And here's a Rilke snippet in one of my fav blogs from his Book of Hours (exquisite!) The quote below was also front-and-center on the sidebar in my brief-and-now-defunct Blogger blog (the one before Crossroads Dispatches):

"I would like to beg you dear Sir, as well as I can, to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer." - Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet

I stumbled onto this book via Google and voila the headline for this post. Looks fascinating: Ever Wonder: Ask Questions and Live into Answers, by Kobi Yamade.

p.s. I'll answer questions posed above in a few days.

images Jia Lu's contemplative Bronze Drum

Comments

[Jason Bates]

I read this yesterday, and thought that it might fit here...

"If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost, that is where they should be. Now put foundations under them."

Henry David Thoreau

Regards,

JB>

[Benecia]

Hi: I was reading "Lipsticking" and clicked on Yvonne's link to your blog and started reading. I am moved to comment on this particular post as I just wrote on my blog on Dec. 31st a post about being moved to tears by joy (http://www.bluemoonblog.com/2006/12/day_of_creativi.html).
And your "live into your writing" phrase especially resonsates with me too, as I've read through some journals from previous times and have marveled at all that has become of what I've written -- all true. But I've never heard it described that way before -- so for that, I must say Thank You.

[O.S.]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4lUvyRRgI8&feature=PlayList&p=A550A24B5C9BDDB7&index=2

Just last evening I wondered about drums of steel and metals.
"Ever Wonder?" as a quote in thought, I , now, often instantly remember the picture above...
...and wonder-... of its beauty, or is there some pain; almost humorously (with efforted thoughts) to think to say, "hey, would some icecream make it better?" (remembering some lists http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/crossroads_dispatches/2006/12/5_things_you_do.html ) ; better though in some good wihout effort more ..of some grace and gracefullness of both the woman and the thought of her with this same question; of the picture in general... of its meaning..., of what are her thoughts; tranquility, my usual conclusion.
YES!
And Poetic it is of what you link in the "Intention #1: Speak Love Fluently" in "if ever Being clear and committed around a theme or vision" could I ballance; and poetic to a Sabbatical, for me-without the "want", and to clairify my thoughts through a wonder of a psalms and its titling "The LORD, the psalmist's shepherd" http://scripturetext.com/psalms/23-1.htm ; even this I suppose is just a drift to what I gather in/on the net.

Of Wonder; As just today it is, as is in this very moment that I rest in front of one of those, you could say, that "is the one of my heart", though she knows or knew, as much as time has passed that she would not remember, and as much as my silence of it is to avoid some disservice I think to an "if ever again to remind or bring mention of it to her again"; that in all I thought it cute to compliment the moment in writing, to reflect the notions of wondering "I wonder what she's thinking" (funny, trust me, that would not happen to her of me..right word~?~out of my league~, ...?) to compliment not only that I was, but just that it was good; or even when anyone has wonders of that of another...when they were, and it was honorable good.
Anyway it is also in the moment it took to add this, that it was her time to leave, passing me by, by what, "just an ironic schedule" or "some will of God" - as He knows and that I think- I should not try to define, even in this alone as quotioned, to what that might be.
Hey maybe its just a lunch break, because in my truth, it is a fact that my stomach growls, and that it is in doing what it is that I need to be for myself, there it will probably be the best place to find what it is best to do, resolving matters of wonder.
Having and using authority over some our own thoughts ourselves, it is of todays post that brought me back to this to comment here today; giving much need in the area that calls for clarity, I chose to ponder the words to comment, and whether to post there or not, but to say something of the least today, if even by email, or both; the hope is that post "will be today" (after lunch).http://evelynrodriguez.typepad.com/crossroads_dispatches/2008/05/indy-4-and-the.html and to write it there a bits more piphi.

[Lorelei F]

Ask questions and live into the answers is a very great concept. It works nicely with the popular trend that we can create our worlds by shifting our perceptions and ways of being.
Thanks for the insight.
Lorelei F