Questions

So, a week or two ago I got a very thoughtful email from the person who is currently in the position I will have next year, introducing herself and offering to answer questions I have about the next year of my life. It's certainly something I want to take her up on, so I've been trying to put together a list of questions I want to ask her so that I don't have to keep bothering her with one thing at a time. Trying to come up with an exhaustive list of questions that you have for the future is sort of like trying to collect all of the oil in the Gulf with an eyedropper- you know it's important work, but you just don't really feel like you're ever going to get anywhere near finished. I guess if you're doing things right, you might never be finished. Asking questions about the future, that is.

As I'm putting together the list of questions, I find myself often wondering what that list says about me as a person, and how the JV answering my questions will judge me based on the questions I do and don't ask. I imagine you could learn a lot about someone based on their list of questions about the future. Specifically, here I'm thinking about ones that can actually be answered, like in my situation, not things like "When will I die?" (although that list would probably be very telling as well). So I'm trying to start using the questions I'm coming up with to decide what I really value. It seems sort of counter-intuitive- wouldn't it be a lot more productive to decide what you valued and then make sure you ask all the questions that address those things? Ideally, yes. But I'm not convinced that very many of us really know what we value. At best, I think we know what we feel like we should value, or that we wish we valued. But how close is that list to the list of things that we really do value? It would probably be very depressing to look at the list of the things that you actually seem to value and compare it to the list of things that you wish you valued.

For illustrative purposes, I've found that my list has way more questions about gyms and tennis courts than it does about churches/parishes and volunteer organizations. I guess, upon reflection, that isn't all that surprising to me. But before this epiphany, I would have definitely ranked faith higher than exercise in terms of my values. I also didn't have any questions about relationships, friend or otherwise, or how they met people in the area. I don't know if that's because I just assume it will happen for me, or if it's not something I value, but that certainly shows that it's not something I've been concerned with so far in my preparation.

I guess there's not a whole lot substantive to take out of this post, so I'll try to enumerate the things that might have been worth saying:

1. I'm still relatively new to introspection, and quite bad at it.
2. I'm excited about NOLA and trying to get all my thoughts together and ask the right questions so that I'm prepared for the next year.
3. We might not really value what we think we value, or at least as much as we'd like to.
4. You can learn from questions without answering them.

I'm going to start concluding all of my posts with quotes that are related to something. Maybe the post, maybe NOLA, maybe God, maybe the world. Here's the first: "You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions" - Naquib Mahfouz n