Have you noticed how much we worship destination? At the gym, your destination is physical perfection. At the mall, your destination is material abundance. At work, it's recognition or promotion. In our daily lives and habits, the destination is fulfillment, peace, and a perpetual veneer of having it all together.
We want our days to be filled with the effortless choices of veggies over that tube of raw cookie dough (I cannot confirm if this is from personal experience or not), morning meditation over a frantic push to get out the door on time, exercise over yet another hour of TV, positive ideas over negative reactions -- and we mercilessly punish ourselves for those times when we don't meet this barrage of personal and cultural expectations.
We resolutely set our sights on the end. We think, If I could just be there, then things would be better. We long to be at the point where we have already arrived, and tend to resent the people we perceive to already have achieved that thing we want, and we continue in cycles of attempting, failing and beating ourselves up.
There are times when simply doing the thing you want to do is enough; a popular and effective method of mind training involves "acting as if" -- that is, doing or thinking the things that someone who has already arrived would do or think -- and once we start to feel the benefits of, say, daily exercise or good study habits or eating well, we then become more motivated to keep it up. I think there can be great value in this when it arises out of a healthy and life-giving place in us.
But I would argue that a person who has reached that point of "acting as if" has also already faced some tough questions, clarified her priorities, and is being drawn forward by a vision that truly excites her. She is not dragging herself unwillingly into compliance, and she is not pretending to be something she does not really want to be deep down.
We tend to avoid looking into the direct gaze of questions, with their blank stare and often unnerving quiet. There are so many of them, and they are content to just sit there, like a house full of strangers, patiently waiting for us to introduce ourselves.
The poet Rainer Maria Rilke said:
...I would like to beg you to have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.
The answers, from this distance, seem pristine, and the landscape between here and there is often messy, uncertain and usually uphill. It's easier, frankly, to fantasize about the destination without having all those uncomfortable conversations with the questions, to throw ourselves at trying to get there, and then to stack the blame when we take wrong turns or wind up back at the beginning.
But the questions themselves, apart from their answers, have much to teach us. They don't really care about appearances; they just show us who we are. Unlike our fantasy destinations, which might frown on our less-than-stellar moments, the questions simply hold up a mirror and ask, "Well, okay, now what?"
The questions, when we are willing to be with them, show us the more compelling components of our journey. This is where we discover not just, What do I want? but:
* Do I actually want this? (you'd be surprised how often the answer is "no")
* If so, then why do I want this? If not, why not?
* Are the reasons for wanting this reasonable or sustainable? Is this a reflection of my true self? (for example,
wanting to impress, placate or please others is an unworkable motivation over the long term)
* What am I missing in my life that I feel would be filled by this? And if I had it, would that space truly be filled?
* What about success frightens me?
* What are some of the benefits, pleasures or escapes I get out of not doing this, things that provide comfort or
security or that release me from being responsible for my own health and happiness? (This can be an
extremely difficult conversation to have, but it really is at the heart of all lasting transformation: we have to
honestly understand what is driving us)
* What are some things that I don't want to face that I will have to honestly confront or let go of if I really want
to achieve this goal?
* What kinds of things genuinely motivate and excite me?
Really, questions are as closely linked with vision as answers (perhaps even more so considering that often our idea of the "right answer" from this standpoint might not be actually what's truly best for us) because they reveal our sometimes complicated motivations and show us the best and most sustainable ways to navigate the landscape towards true transformation. Walking with the questions allows something real to unfurl in our lives, to make decisions that sit right in our gut and that work, to truly grow into what we were meant to become. As uncomfortable as they can be, questions deserve our respect, our listening, our time, and our welcome.
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