On Questioning: A love letter to Open Minds.
To question something, according to the dictionary, means a multitude of things. To interrogate intensively; to doubt, dispute; to subject to analysis. To ask questions. To inquire. To challenge, contest, impeach, query.
Questioning as an adjective is synonymous to being ‘curious,’ or ‘confused’ or ‘perplexed’ or ‘skeptical.’
To question is to invite for more information.
It is a request for the broadening of our knowledge.
It is an invitation to and for exploration.
I am by nature not a very aggressive person. When delving into psychology’s Big Five model, I score rather highly on agreeableness, which does not mean that I will always agree with another person, but that I will, by means of my nature, likely make it seem as though I do. I enjoy offering others their comfort to be, to think, to speak. In the past, this has meant the imposing of their lives and thoughts onto mine quite harshly. Now, it means that I let their essence flow over me gracefully and allow it to slide off me at the other end.
I am not an aggressive person and thus I am not very imposing. The things I say come packaged in a “maybe this will be something for you,” rather than “you ought to listen to me because I know best.”
I am not an aggressive person and thus I am not a very aggressive writer. In her essay ‘Why I Write,’ Joan Didion defines what writing means to her. She explains:
“In many ways writing is the act of saying I, of imposing oneself upon other people, of saying listen to me, see it my way, change your mind. It’s an aggressive, even hostile act. You can disguise its qualifiers and tentative subjunctives, with ellipses and evasions — with the whole manner of intimating rather than claiming, of alluding rather than stating — but there’s no getting around the fact that setting words on paper is the tactic of a secret bully, an invasion, an imposition of the writer’s sensibility on the reader’s most private space.”
Now, through my writing, I do not try to impose onto you that you ought to see things my way. Everything I do or say or write comes with this silent whisper: “I may be wrong, I am so often wrong.”
The more I have gone looking for answers in life and to Life, the more questions popped up out of the readings, the teachings, the conversations had and listened to. And as such, I am intimately aware that I do not have all the answers, and that those I do have might very well be proven wrong.
If and when I have found a truth (note: a not the) somehow, I will offer it to you with the most gracious generosity I can carry.
My writing might not always offer answers set in metaphysical stone.
It offers an invitation to explore.
To be curious about the multitude of angles surrounding a topic, to see things from a new perspective, to crawl deeply into something that has always seemed so mundane. To question everything.
It is a place for open minds. For the beginning of a conversation.
For curiosity.
