We Move in the Direction of Our Questions
By posing the unanswerable questions of meaning, men establish themselves as question-asking beings. Behind all the cognitive questions for which men find answers, there lurk the unanswerable ones that seem entirely idle and have always been denounced as such. It is more than likely that men, if they were ever to lose the appetite for meaning we call thinking and cease to ask unanswerable questions, would lose not only the ability to produce those thought-things that we call works of art but also the capacity to ask all the answerable questions upon which every civilization is founded.
—Hannah Arendt
What would our life be like if we never asked high-quality questions that didn't have easy answers but required us to hold them until the answer appeared from our intuition instead of our intellect? Holding a question isn't something that comes naturally to us; we want to answer them. The best questions are the ones that want to be held, not answered, until the answer finds us.
We tend to move in the direction of the questions we ask ourselves. If we ask Mitigating Misery questions, we only address the immediate problems causing us discomfort. While these questions may alleviate our misery, they only bring us back to our previous level of comfort. On the other hand, if we ask Optimizing Opportunity questions that come from our aspirations, rather than problems, we can move towards a better future. To achieve this, we need to ask high-quality questions that challenge us. Let’s not ruin a good question with an answer.
Below is a long list of questions compiled by our Know Your Neighbor Cohort, which brings groups of San Antonians together for a 15-month series of learning sessions. Participants engage with San Antonio's history, as well as the current realities of social, racial, and economic inequity, through various means such as learning resources, immersion experiences, roundtable discussions, reflective workshops, walking tours, and meals together. Each quarter, following a weekend of being immersed in the lives and cultures of neighborhoods in San Antonio, we compile a list of questions that we want to explore further.
With permission from the leadership of Know Your Neighbor, I’m sharing this list of questions with you in hopes that you will scan it and perhaps find a question that you want to hold. The list is far too long to read in one sitting. Scan it until your eye falls on a question that is calling you, and stay there for a while. Take the question with you and live with it until the answer finds you. If you choose a question, the chances are pretty good that the answer is looking for you.
Do you regularly notice, identify, and reflect on the inequalities and movements toward equity in our community and our country’s daily news?
Do you allow yourself to slow down to sit in the beauty of the nature you have around you and silently think or just be?
Do you notice and as a result grieve the absence of who is not in the room?
Do you consider how your choices and individual freedoms impact your community and those who do not have access to the same?
Do you choose words to the benefit of the needs of the listener?
Do you consider the impact of your words on others?
What is the nature of God?
How can you continue to live your life with energy and purpose?
How can you be more open with your feelings?
How can you write a book that will help others and not be an exercise in ego gratification?
What is the path to transformation?
What is your purpose in life?
How can you be better at giving and receiving love?
How can you create an organization that combines public service and personal growth?
How can you be more selfless?
How can you use my gifts for social justice?
What constitutes a community?
How can you organize your knowledge, understanding, and experience so you can easily access it to be of greater service to others?
What armor are you wearing and what layers can you begin to shed?
Are you softening your presence to welcome expansion and abundance?
Are you pausing your internal dialogue to be present with and process the dialogue of others?
How are you expressing gratitude for the many blessings in your life?
How will your interactions with others be perceived? Positive, negative, nondescript?
How will the time invested into this cohort be put to use?
Can you identify the different communities you are part of and can you understand any relationship with each one?
How can you be a bridge to the communities around you?
Will you turn away from inequity or work to lessen it?
How will you share your experiences this weekend and will you be able to create a spark of interest?
Do you allow yourself to just exist?
Do you experience reflective gratitude for the gifts of those around you?
Do you allow yourself to experience the beauty that surrounds you?
Do you celebrate the small moments in your life?
Do you live comfortably with your weaknesses?
How do the names you carry help or hinder your daily navigation?
In which ways are you creating spaces for pause in your daily rhythms?
In what ways are you letting joy and laughter saturate your life?
Can you, as an introvert, find ways to provide radical hospitality to others while still meeting my own needs for solitude?
What does loving the suppressor look like? Can you do it? Should you do it? Does loving the suppressor harm the suppressed?
Does advocating for one group mean you’re “off the hook” in helping others? Should you go deep/wide in one area? Or narrow/shallow in all types of inequity?
How can you use the gift of stability and love you were given to provide a sense of the same to others who come from different places?
Can you use the pain of times you were treated inequitably to help provide equity for those coming behind you?
How might we continue incorporating levity and laughter as we engage in hard conversations and confront heavy realities?
What makes a place or structure feel like home?
What did you learn about neighbors and neighboring from your family of origin? What do you want to carry forward?
How can you be a good steward of your privilege, your money, your time, your gifts, and the earth?
Who are you inviting to share in the joy of the experience?
What voices are you inviting to speak?
What story are you sharing?
What are you doing to pause and reflect? Pause and process?
How are you creating space to welcome the gift of others’ presence and story?
What do you need to learn from this?
How are you defining unity? The absence of disagreement? Our commitment to continue collaborating?
Do you take intentional time to stop and appreciate the beauty of the natural world around you?
Do you take time to pause and really listen to the silence?
When you walk along paths, do you consider the footsteps of those who walked the same path before you?
Do you spend the same amount of time supporting yourself and your needs as you do for those around you?
Do you recognize the choice you make every morning to lead with integrity, kindness, and love?
Are you conscious in the moment that others may need to be loved and supported differently than you?
Do you allow the sounds around you to distract you or center you in a place of mindfulness?
Do you take the time at the end of each day to pause and give gratitude?
How often do you fall asleep with the food ache of a day well lived?
How do you wish to be remembered, and does your life reflect that desire now?
Where are the hurt places that you react to with harshness rather than tenderness?
How are you showing up today?
Who is it hard for you to learn from?
Who are you representing?
Who isn’t here? Who is not in the room or who is missing?
Are you holding space for yourself and others?
Who needs your proximity?
Are you listening?
How would your mother, father, or grandmother exist in this space?
Who needs your voice?
Where is home?
What shared experience are we striving towards?
What is required of you to contribute to spaces of consensus?
Who do you need to come alongside in the building of a beloved community?
What pushes and pulls you to and from the creation of home?
How can your curiosity be used to care for those around you?
How can you be part of cultivating space for the necessary sharing of stories?
Who is to your right and your left?
Are the systems you’re thriving in keeping you from seeing the whole picture?
Are you allowing others to point out what you don’t see?
Who built the walls of your city?
Are you listening for a new name?
What are the essential ingredients of change?
How might we change hearts and minds so people are valued over profits? How might I change my own?
How might I become better informed? What resources are available?
Who do I need to know? How might I connect with them?
What other groups/organizations are out there in this work/space?
Do you have the courage to combat an unjust system?
Do you allow yourself to view history through another’s lens?
Do you create your own stories?
How do I incorporate a look at evil systems in my ministry, individuals, and communities more effectively?
How do I resist injustice with rest and yet not check out?
When is anger sacred and when is it degenerative?
Where will I have the most impact?
Do I focus on providing tools for the spiritual, mental, and emotional wholeness of individuals caught in the harms of the society we’ve built or call out the issues of that society? Is it even a question of either or?
Do you recognize the positive action that can result from your emotions?
Do you carry the weight of your past with the reverence it deserves?
Do you hold yourself accountable every day?
Do you seek first to understand rather than judge or assume?
Do you allow yourself to have uncomfortable conversations?
Do you create a space that welcomes others to have hard/uncomfortable conversations with you?
Do you recognize the power your own privilege can have to create positive change?
Do you manifest success for others as strongly as you do for yourself?
What are the unseen systems that function around you and what value do they create? In what ways do they harm?
Do you have a hard conversation with yourself and those you are close to?
What ideas are you letting “go to seed” so that you can let them grow in new hearts and minds?
How can this generation atone for and repair the harm caused by the sins of those who came before us?
How does rest factor into breaking down and rebuilding systems?
What is an activist?
Can you build wealth without harming another being?
Where are the spaces I need to lead conversations, and where do I need to listen?
How can I learn about, connect with, and honor my ancestors?
By romanticizing far-off places and exciting travel, what have I missed in my own neighborhood?
Are my “red line” and “blue line” in balance? And what “yellow line” is contributing to or preventing wholeness?
Knowing what I know now, how do I make decisions about where I live, and eventually where I buy a home?
Who is this space designed for?
In what ways have faith and the church been used to oppress? And how have I used faith to oppress?
What actions can I take today to co-create the city that I’m for?
Do you read the signs around you and wonder who was in the room when they were written?
Do you consider the life and layers beneath your feet as you stand your ground?
Do you allow yourself to slumber in a field of flowers and awake to a rainbow?
Do I have the courage to speak up about inequities in housing and to correct those who seek to mislead?
Can giving up our place at the table be more effective than using our seat at the table to effect change? Or can we do both?
Do I seek to know the real truth about people who are different from me?
Can I be intentional about leaving my neighborhood to experience the rich cultures in San Antonio’s other neighborhoods?
How can I be more tolerant of different points of view?
How can I learn more about the history of San Antonio?
How can I quiet the negative voices in my mind?
How can I use my gifts to make a positive impact in the world?
How can I get outside of my own neighborhood bubble more often?
How can I get my ego out of the way?
How can I confront the hatred in the world with love and not more hatred?
How can I love more freely and indiscriminately?
How can I create a space where others can reveal their true selves through their stories?
How can I discover more of my true self?
Once I discover my true self, how can I prevent my false self from reclaiming that territory?
Who would benefit from this good news?
What will motivate someone to listen?
Whose story needs to be retold?
What are the neighborhoods in SA I haven’t explored? Why not?
What does migration mean within your family tree?
What are the stories you choose NOT to share?
Where can you show grace and compassion, where you may normally show anger?
What are the food traditions that define your family?
What experience has delighted you recently?
How often do you look up at the sky?
How can I ask better questions and listen to understand what motivates the other person’s feelings and actions?
How do I move from thought to action?
How do I impact others around me, that allows them to be more aware of community?
How can I lead a more aware life that allows me to be a positive force for change in my community?
Am I aware of the invisible systems around me and am I willing to make them visible?
Am I considering the ethics of what I put in my body?
Where else do slippery slopes exist in our community?
What can I do to be aware of the origin stories of others?
What can I do to limit the harmful aspects of my family’s history and its harm in my life?
Do you think about the journey behind the person, place, or thing as you engage with it?
Are you looking at the horizon for movement or the life nesting in the trees?
Are you relishing the moments when you are wholly at home?
Do you invite others to come and see before you tell them what’s in your line of sight?
How can we ask where others define home?
How can we have differences and move towards the goal of love?
How do we share tables, pools, and hospitals without fear of loss of resources?
How can we create safety and love for others seeking asylum and those living here documented?
How can we keep people’s spectrums in mind?
Who let ‘dem dogs out?
Am I doing enough?
Is there a way that I can be doing too much?
Am I moving my eyes slowly as I observe my community?
Am I paying attention to the importance of what I put into my body?
Am I regulating what I am spending my finite energy on?
Am I challenging my narrative?
Am I giving myself enough opportunities to feel uncomfortable?
Do I truly understand the importance of PATIENCE when I am feeling frustrated?
Am I truly valuing the feeling of home?
Do I find a way to be humbled daily?
How might we change minds and hearts?
How might I begin to change my heart and mind?
Am I attentive to the invisible systems around me and their impact?
What bird song might I sing to heal another’s trauma?
Have I warmed up my palette and digestive system?
Who is the next “BIRD” (bird by bird) to connect with?
How might I let in the light?
How can you create environments of love and safety?
What has to change in me to ask better questions?
What systems do I too easily ignore? What could change if I noticed?
What tools do you need to see more fully?
What do I need to connect with to learn my family’s migration stories?
How can I cultivate a space that feels like home to newcomers?
Where is the human issue in this political issue?
Who do I need to invite to “come and see”?
How can I cast out fear in this conversation?
What do I miss when I rush and what will I notice if I slow down?
What tools do I need to see better?
How can I discern the difference between safety and comfort, knowing that discomfort leads to growth?
How can I use my personal histories– actual and received – to guide my actions?