Ask me a question: A modern day philosophy

DAY 12:

What I loved and still love about philosophy is the foundation of reason it was built upon. I did study the subject at A’ level but I realise that I always had a lean towards self questioning, meaty, existential ones at that. Sometimes the questioning led to indecision, which wasn’t that helpful and hadn’t really stood me in good stead later on in life until I looked more closely at what was holding me back. At that point, I realised I hadn’t been asking the right questions and that these questions needed answers and that I was in fact capable of answering these myself and therefore the creator of the new me. This is also how I stepped into my fifties, though I have been asking and answering questions about myself for many years prior to that milestone.

One of my favourite philosophical moments was posed to me by my wife, when we had only just met, or at least got together as a couple. I had given her a picture of myself from my time away travelling pre-relationship and one day, during conversation she presented this to me as if returning it. She asked me to turn it over and on the back it said: Ask me a question. It took me back as I’d never been told to ask a question in this way before and it felt like I’d been tricked into being inquisitive. It also helped me reconnect with the act of wanting to find out. Something that is missing I think from some of our day to day conversations and perhaps more generally from our society. We are in such a rush to make our minds up that we don’t always take the time to find out. Having the intention to want to find out helps us to ask more questions and spend less time assuming. As Joe Lycett once said: ‘When you assume you make an ASS out of U and ME’.

I can’t recall what question I asked Tahira but I do know that it helped me to find out a bit more about her.