Living Life as a Genuine Question

“His story . . . began with a genuine question, not an agenda.”

Brad Cummings

Living Life as a Genuine Question

“I think you’re addicted to your phone.”  My friend Danny said to me.  “You have cradled it in your hands the whole meeting.  Why are you so afraid to miss something?”

What Danny didn’t know at the time was that I was involved in an important conversation with a couple of my daughters via text messaging for the roughly one hour we were in the meeting together.  It was a critical conversation that needed to occur during that time.  Of course, he didn’t know that was what was happening, so I explained it to him.

“Oh.” He said.  “I understand now.”

But, I also began to understand.  I really do spend way too much time on my phone!  It has become a “ball and chain” to me in lots of ways.  I use it for everything – speaking with people by voice and text as well as gathering all kinds of information.   You and I truly live in an information-networked world and it’s helpful in lots of ways.  But, I’ve found that it’s also giving us a very slanted view.

I began to read some really old books over the past couple of years.  Well, I say really old, but perhaps that’s in Internet time.  These are books written before nineteen hundred by residents of The United States.  Most of these aren’t available online in a digital format so I’ve had to resort to purchasing the real book in order to read it.  Imagine that!

What I didn’t imagine, when I began this process, is that the picture the books paint is completely different than what I assumed life to be like during that period of American History.  In fact, I have come to the conclusion that almost all of the modern thought I was taught in school, and is commonly believed today, is false!  It’s been real eye opening!

Now that my eyes have been opened I’ve had to take time, and am continually doing so, to reframe my entire world.  As my friend Danny pointed out, being so intent on what is happening currently and online isn’t so good for me.  Allowing persons with agendas to constantly push their point of view has caused me to miss much of the most important and basic information related to the entire founding of our society and way of life!  And, in the process, I’ve discovered an important principle pointed out to me my Brad Cummings, “Live life with a genuine question, not an agenda.”

Living anew, based on this principle, gives every person who does it a newfound freedom.  It‘s a freedom to see things in a fresh perspective unburdened by the agenda’s of those that have asked us to believe what they believe and be, as they want us to be.  It’s an opportunity for each one of us to, perhaps for the first time, to stop thinking and talking in short bursts of sound bite “truths” that are the communication means of our time.

So, what if living your life as a genuine questioner could really make a difference in your opinions, the quality of your life and what you offer to others?