"A Game of 21 Questions"

“I was just wondering as I was walking along thinking to myself.”

—Winnie The Pooh

“You need to start asking better questions.”

—Socrates

Every day, I ask myself questions.

And—you know what?—it’s not so much how I answer them that really matters.  What matters, is that I bother to ask in the first place.  Questions challenge the way I’m thinking and feeling in the moment and, ultimately, the way I'm choosing to live in that very moment.

Provided below is a list of 21 questions that I started asking myself a long time ago.  In my "practice," I will pick one question from my list and think upon it for a day or two, maybe even a week or more.  The intention is not to see how many questions I can get through in one sitting.  Rather, it is to challenge myself, through my questioning, to awaken to life just a little bit more in each moment.

Consider adopting such a practice in your own life.  In time, you may find that questioning yourself in this manner has contributed significantly to your enjoyment of life simply because it has challenged and, subsequently, enabled you to stay present in your day-to-day, moment-by-moment activities.  Life is about "doing" and about "becoming" (or "rediscovering") oneself in the doing, and happiness in life is experienced in the here and now, and nowhere else.  Question yourself, and let it bring you back to this very moment.  Again, it is not necessarily your answer to any particular question at any one point that is the most illuminating.  Paradoxically, it is the practice of asking, rather than answering, that flips the light switch on.

God's peace,

Bling

The Questions I Ask Myself

Where are you, Dave?  (Here?)  What time is it?  (Now?)  What are you?  (This moment?)

Why are you doing what you’re doing right now?

What are your assumptions?

Are you being kind and caring toward yourself?

Did you see the sunrise today?  Did you watch the sunset last night?

Are you communicating completely and clearly, or are you withholding important information?

When you wash the dishes, can you just wash the dishes?

Are you running or staying?

What scares you?

Are you responding to the event at hand or to just an old memory?

Are you at home with yourself?

How comfortable are you with uncertainty, ambiguity, and paradox?

Are you willing to die to set others free?

What does being genuine look and feel like?

What would you do or how would you be if the opinions of others no longer mattered?

What would things be like if you stopped managing and regulating everything and everybody, including yourself?

From where are you deriving your sense of strength and power?

How do you want to feel tomorrow, next week, next year, five years from now, ten years from now, a hundred years from now, a thousand years from now, a million years from now, a billion years from now?

What makes you come alive?

How tied is your happiness to your circumstances?

Do you “know” that you cannot experience life fully unless you are willing to give everything away?  Willing to no longer hold anything back?  To no longer prepare for your escape?  To no longer look for alternatives to your current experience?  To no longer think that there will be ample time to do things later?