From my view of the world, questions are more powerful than answers. Working with the people I have for the past twenty years to help them understand the power of questions as a means to the ends they desire makes clear that the concept is simple but hardly easy. It isn’t that having the answers is necessarily easier; the problem is that we were all taught from an early age that not having answers is dangerous.
As school children, we were all rewarded for providing the right answers and punished when we didn’t. Being right is optional as adults, provided you can argue forcefully enough. Self-righteousness goes a long way in today’s world, where toxic masculinity, coercion, and cruelty are celebrated by those who cannot simply think straight through the answers – much less come up with better questions.
I’ve been thinking about this for the past few weeks. I know I could – and perhaps should – find this situation frightening. But instead, I find this to be an enormous and powerful opportunity. It’s much easier to aim for a target you can see. I see a world filled with people who are afraid of and believe those who think differently have wounded them. They are emboldened to be aggressive and violent and vindicated by a populous movement that celebrates smallness and darkness.
When I was younger, I would never have felt this was something I could embrace. The evil in the world felt so oppressive that the only option was to either run from it – or hide with those with thoughts like mine and plot to overthrow the status quo. It was exhausting, frustrating, and maddening. I felt dissociated from hope and disenfranchised from the firmly established world I was supposed to be a part of. I believe that youthfulness is often a reason to be angry. I’m not angry anymore. And I am perhaps more hopeful than ever because I know now that what we are dealing with is unsustainable and change is necessary.
I am sure that everything I have worked to understand and disambiguate over these past twenty years of doing this work has brought me to a vista where I can clearly see past my shadow. When I look into the distance, I see a path forward that feels deeply important and makes perfect sense to me. My hope springs from the people I work with who demonstrate that thinking, feeling, and being something valuable makes a meaningful and significant difference. These leaders understand that when leadership is lacking as it is today, people suffer. And when people suffer, so do their surroundings.
There is much at stake here. The answers are not all that complicated, but they are not simple either. Asking powerful questions that provoke others to think is the key to getting beyond the walls of resistance erected around us by those who believe they are right and everyone else is wrong. Things start to change when we accept that perhaps nobody is right.
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