Daily Dose 12: Asking the Right Questions

Asking the right questions to get the right answer is a valuable skill needed for more than the scientific and legal professions. Asking the right questions can open new vistas in closed discussions or close discussion on a broad opportunity. Right questions are surgical tools for delicate mind and heart surgery. Right questions make it possible to interrogate yourself and find yourself guilty, when everyone thinks you innocent, and vice versa. Asking the right questions is especially helpful for unearthing values and priorities.

Lots of Questions

While all question-asking funnels thinking into specific channels, only asking the right questions channels thinking into deeply profitable pools of practical, yet profound answers.

• Do you agree with existential philosophy?
• Do absolutes exist?
• Do you want to make money in your life?
• Do you want your life to benefit mankind?
• Is it right to tell the truth?
• Should I want to have children?
• Do I want to travel?
• Should I start exercising?
• Do I want turkey on rye or antipasto for lunch?

From the sublime to the ridiculous, an endless array of questions might help our consideration—or lead us hopelessly astray.

One Questions to Divide Them

At the risk of sounding hopelessly simplistic, I’d like to suggest that instead of an endless swirl of philosophic questions, all tangled and heaped together, the answer to one simple question defines every person.  Its answer does set a course that can clarify values. In fact, an affirmative answer sets a course where only another question or two will zero us in on our needful priorities.  This key question: Are you a Christian?

I know, I know. How helpful can the question be with such a poorly defined noun at its core? Political misfits, mental cases, state-run religions, a few mass murderers, lots of pedestrian middle Americans all have laid claim to the group, yet there seems to be little connection of belief amongst them. So, yes, a tangent to accommodate a deeper explanation is probably needed, but this is a daily dose, a little daily pill, not an arduous reconstructive surgery.

So, here’s my compromise. The daily dose continues unabated, but I will scrub up for surgery and sterilize the operating room, and offer some surgical input within the next few days because if surgery is needed, offering only pills is not good medical protocol, is it?