“What if this were not a hypothetical question?”
I love to ask questions.
When I was a tyke I like to drove my folks bug-nuts with the “Why, Mommy? Why, Daddy? Why? Why? Why?” questions that never much seemed to end.
Even now as I approach my fourth decade I still tend to get conversations rolling by asking questions that I may or may not think I’ve got an answer for. I’m not in the teaching profession but I love seeing the light bulb go off when someone I’m talking with “gets it.”
I have a Brazilian friend who said there is a Portuguese phrase for that light bulb moment. It escapes me right now but I remember the English translation: “nickel down”. He told me it came from the old vending machines they used to have South of the Equator. You didn’t get whatever you were trying to buy from the machine until the nickel dropped down.
My mom’s a high school biology teacher still, so maybe I come by it genetically. I don’t know.
Thinking Excercise
One big reason questions are so wonderful is that they force us to think. And thinking can keep us young.
Not only that, but thinking through questions and problems and scenarios can help prepare us for times of crisis.
I remember we were living in Florida when hurricane Floyd was forming up in the Atlantic. Because I was in marine operations in the shipping business I keep close tabs on the storm systems out there. Looking at the satellite photos of that storm I called Gorgeous and told her to start packing up. Because if the storm didn’t change tracks we were going to be heading out.
And that was 5 days before the storm hit the coast. Got a framed picture of Floyd taken three days after that phone call hanging on my office wall right now.
Fortunately for us packing up and heading out was fairly simple and straight forward. Why? Because we’d asked ourselves a question prior to that day.
What would we do if “the Big One” was headed our way?
For us, living right near the Florida coast surrounded by tidal marsh (our subdivision at the time was called “Marsh Lakes” 🙄 ) the question was not hypothetical. The danger was real. In 18 years of living in the Southeast I’ve run from about a half a dozen storms. I’ve also ridden out a couple doozies onboard ships. I’ve seen their destructive power up close and personal.
Therefore we treated the question much more seriously than a hypothetical exercise. We actually invested the effort it took to come up with a workable plan. And because of the way we treated the question, facing the reality was not nearly as big a deal when the time came as it was for many other folks.
How You Respond Makes a Difference
How do you respond when you see a question?
Many people just gloss over it with a little, “Hmmph.” And then they go about their business.
Other folks don’t even notice that a question was asked.
If you fall into one of those categories you may very well one day end up like a friend of ours. She grew up in that coastal Florida town, lived there all her life, and never even thought about “the Big One.”
When it eventually came she was in a tight spot. She was seriously stressed out to say the least.
Fortunately we were on top of our game well enough that while I sorted out the ships I had to get out of the way of the storm at work Gorgeous went over and adapted our plan to their situation. It worked out that our friend got some help from us to get her and her infant baby out of harms way. And her cat. And her dog. And her Vietnamese pot-bellied pig.
We brought the whole zoo (plus our own cat) along with us to higher ground.
The Choice is Yours
So the next time someone asks you a challenging or difficult question you have a choice.
You can blow it off and hope you never face that situation in reality. Or, if you do, that a good friend will come a long and bail you out if you ever get in that jam.
Or you can think about it as if it really wasn’t a hypothetical question and work out how you’d respond for real. Then if you ever find yourself in that situation you will be way ahead of the game. And folks will appreciate how well you respond when things around you start falling apart. Trust me.
But that’s just the Way I C it.
–Chris Cree, SuccessCREEations.
Jesse Petersen says
April 12, 2007 at 3:25 PMHypothetical questions are a great way to find out about yourself and others. That’s why I love Bloggy Questions oh soooo much.
Chris Cree says
April 12, 2007 at 3:37 PMYou got that right, Jessie. They are some of my favorite discussions around here too.
Rob Kistner says
April 13, 2007 at 1:04 AMI am a poet. I stopped here thinking this blog was a writers blog. Whta kind of blog is this?
Simon says
April 13, 2007 at 2:22 AMHi Chris, I think this is a great way to get you thinking. You can also use this method to come up with alternative plans which I find helps to test my original assumptions and gives a back up of plan A fails.
Jesse Petersen says
April 13, 2007 at 7:16 AMRob, click the top 5 links to the left under “Library” to find out everything you want to know about Liz and Successful Blog.
Chris Cree says
April 13, 2007 at 9:09 AMRob, It’s Thinking, writing, business ideas… You can get some of each here. 🙂
Chris Cree says
April 13, 2007 at 9:12 AMSimon, so true. I don’t like being in a situation where I end up out of alternatives. Asking questions (and thinking through answers) is one way to help with that.
Adam Kayce : Monk At Work says
April 13, 2007 at 7:59 PMThis topic of questions is an interesting one…
I’ve been teaching “intuition development” (amongst other things) for years now, and one of my cardinal rules is, “Stay Curious.” I’ve found that without a healthy dose of curiosity, people rarely get very deep.
They may pull a few details out, but they rarely get deep enough into the subject to really find out what’s making it tick.
Who knows, maybe that Floridian friend of yours who never questioned “The Big One” just wasn’t a very curious person…
BTW, we moved to Sarasota the year before the big year hit; the one with four huge hurricanes, the year just before Katrina… and we left by the end of Katrina’s season. Not for us! 😉
Chris Cree says
April 14, 2007 at 7:32 AMInteresting about the link between curiosity and relationships, Adam. I hadn’t thought about it before.
I think in my friend’s case it was more of an “it’ll never happen to me so why think about it” situation.
I feel for you on that. I work with a guy from Turkey and the first year he was in the states was the first year Florida got pounded. He wanted to know why anyone would ever want to live there.
I had trouble convincing him that it wasn’t always like that.
Adam Kayce : Monk At Work says
April 14, 2007 at 10:40 AMRight ââ¬â the “so why think about it”? Never happened to me; at least, not right away. I’m insatiably curious, and I’m finding that it works for me. 🙂
And yes, Florida had it’s great points, too… but real estate also doubled in our area in a year’s time, so buying a home became out of the question.
Now we have our own home, a great community of friends, and more. Great outcome.
Chris Cree says
April 14, 2007 at 2:54 PMFunny how parents tend to tell children that “curiosity killed the cat” to get them to stop with the questions. Do you think it helps kids to hear things like that?
Adam Kayce : Monk At Work says
April 14, 2007 at 4:50 PMGoodness, no. In fact, I remember reading an essay by John Holt on education (I believe it was him), and he talked about how kids/people naturally learn, naturally absorb information, and naturally exhibit incredible curiosity… until the impulse gets driven out of them by negative input just like that.
It’s a shame, too; we’re capable of so much, if just given the chance.
Chris Cree says
April 14, 2007 at 5:21 PMIf it’s so destructive to the fulfillment of the child’s potential then why do you think that crushing negative input is so predominant in the world today?
Why is it that so of us have had our curiosity killed by “curiosity killed the cat”?
Adam Kayce : Monk At Work says
April 14, 2007 at 5:51 PMGood question; I personally think it comes down to fear.
When we get overwhelmed, we’re caught believing in a lie; it’s the most common misunderstanding we carry, and, the most pernicious. It’s the belief in emptiness.
That the universe is empty, that we’re empty, that there is no God/spirit/goodness/whatever in the universe; that scarcity is truth. And believing in that lie makes us pretty darn crabby, to say the least.
So when we get triggered by something in our lives, the voices in our heads start trying to remind us that, “if we give in, if we let this child get the best of us, if things don’t go as I want them to go” ââ¬â or whatever the situation is ââ¬â “then it’ll all go bad, we’ll be alone, there’ll be nothing left for us (or whatever).” Fear sets in, and it’s a downward spiral from there.
That’s why our generosity goes out the window. That’s why we act in ways we wish we didn’t, even when our intentions are for being compassionate, loving human beings.
The remedy, of course, is love. Connection. Getting the inner reminder that fullness, not emptiness, is truth.
… this could become a big conversation (too late! 😉 ), but it’s a good one…
Anyhow, them’s my $.02.
Chris Cree says
April 14, 2007 at 9:03 PMI wonder if it is sometimes a case of the parents getting beaten down.
They come home tired from all the stress at work and they get the little toddler bombarding them with questions, “Why? Why? Why?”
So they give them the standard answer that they heard when they were younger just to stop the madness and get a bit of quiet.
Then kids get the message that “questions are bad” and learn to stop asking.
Adam Kayce : Monk At Work says
April 14, 2007 at 9:13 PM(great to see I’m not the only one blogging on Saturday evening…)
That’s exactly what I’m talking about ââ¬â the parent is tired, and susceptible to those “voices of doubt” inside. You know, the ones saying, “If I don’t get a break, I’m going to die,” or, “No one cares about me,” or whatever.
Then when their naturally-curious two-year old asks, “Why?”, they’re so wrapped up in their scarcity-thinking, they can only respond from their fear, scarcity, and exhaustion.
(There are ways out of it, of course… is a good one, EFT is another… not to mention a hefty dose of spiritual connection 😉 )
The child, seeing their parent as God, starts to take away the message that, “Gee, maybe I shouldn’t ask…” and WHAMO ââ¬â there it goes.
But it doesn’t have to be that way…