Working On Our Questions

Working On Our Questions August 13, 2015

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We live in a world fixated on the importance of answers.

The point of living in the Information Age appears to be the accessibility of answers. We expect to be able to find answers with a few clicks or keystrokes. Our great institutions of education, commerce, even religion focus their efforts on finding answers.

We tend to assess and evaluate answers almost before we have even heard them. We want people to give us the bottom line, to summarize their work and give us their answer. Finding answers, accurate answers, is essential to our lives.

We value people who can give us concise, coherent answers. Answers are powerful. Answers are profitable.

Some of us are forgetting the power of asking good questions. We can research online by entering key words. Clear answers are available to us without asking clear questions.

We concentrate so much attention on answers we are in danger of forgetting our own questions.

There are people who do not even wait for us to finish asking before they start answering.

Part of the value of accurate answers is they are transitory. Our answers adapt over time, as our ability to perceive them changes.

One of the values of strong questions is they tend to remain strong over time. We may be asking the same questions we were asking years ago. Our answers may become clearer as we continue to ask them.

Accurate, understandable answers can help us. Insightful questions are our keys to open the locked doors behind which answers are hidden.

There are times when our questions are not seeking information. The answers we can research online are not particularly satisfying.

Our questions are deeper than the answers we can find.

What questions do you have?

When do you work on your own questions?

[Image by Scott McLeod]


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