Unasked Questions - Grasshopper

We are a curious lot. We ask questions – lots of them. But there are some questions we never (hardly ever) ask.

Has anyone at the deli ever asked you whether you wanted the Swiss cheese cut from the solid side or from the side that had holes in it? Probably not, but that is a legitimate, rarely asked question.

 

But are there other unasked questions that have a little more meat on them? The answer is yes, but we don’t often ask those questions.

 

What unasked question is lingering in the back of your mind that you either haven’t had the presence of mind or guts to ask yet? And why doesn’t it get asked?

 

The answer I come up with is fear of what the answer is.

 

There is a part of us that protects us from asking that question by keeping it hidden from us for fear that the answer will devastate us. Even if we know what the question is, that same part of us keeps us from asking it out of fear.

 

Like with any fear, the first step in mitigating it is to step in its direction. The person afraid of speaking in public has to let the first word dribble out before they have a chance of lessening the fear feeling.

 

What is it that you really want to know? That’s the question you should repeatedly ask and then give the answer time to bubble up.

 

Fear of knowing is one of the most crippling fears you’ll encounter in life because the answer comes from the scariest place on earth - the unknown.

 

My suggestion is to petition the unknown and ask often. Ask, “What do I really want to know?” and then wait for an answer. The answer may scare you at first but never to the degree of not knowing, which is the queen of hobgoblins.

 

Once you know, you’ll have legitimate information to work with and your options will be clear, not cloaked in the opaque shroud of fear.

 

Try it now. Ask, “What do I really want to know?” And for extra credit, ask, “What don’t I want to know?” The well-defined answers will keep you from going to and fro.

 

All the best,

John