Gentle reader, following is the final entry for this four part series: ‘Questions.’
JOURNEY QUESTIONS
- Where is my current life-path leading me?
- Why am I choosing this life-path?
- Am I following a well-worn path? Am I choosing a path less traveled?
- What is my destination? Will my current path take me there?
- Can I be on my path and not have a destination?
- Am I a path-maker?
- What helps me discern that I am on the ‘right path’? What if I discern that I am on the ‘wrong path’? Is there a ‘right path?’
‘CHOICE’ QUESTIONS [‘To Choose’ means that I select freely after consideration.]
- How often do I choose? How many times a day do I actually choose?
- Does it matter whether I am aware of choosing? Can I really choose if I am not aware? What does choosing without awareness look like – feel like – sound like?
- What is the effect of my choosing upon myself and upon others?
- To what extent, if any, are the bones ‘choice’ covered by the skin of ‘responsibility?’
- What is the motivation that is the life-blood that feeds and sustains choice AND that keeps responsibility supple, flexible, and healthy?
- What is the motivation that infects the life-blood with a cancer that kills both choice and responsibility?
- Why do I choose to bring a specific virtue or vice to my world? To what extent do I believe that the virtue or vice I bring to my world nurtures or depletes me and all those that I directly touch and many more that I indirectly touch?
- To what extent is my conduct truly rooted in my selecting freely after consideration? To what extent does my conduct influence future choices in a way that is more automatic than thoughtful?
- To what extent does my conduct support my being aware of my choices?
- To what extent do I have an obligation to reflect upon my choices so that I will learn more about the ‘me’ that impacts the many ‘yous’ I meet each day?
- How can I help others grow and develop more fully if I am not aware of how I engage, or refuse to engage, choice?
GENERATIVITY, CONTINUITY AND FINALITY QUESTIONS
- What happens when I die?
- What is the story others will tell about me after I die?
- What is the story I want others to tell about me?
- What is the story I am living out now? Is this my story or is it a story that others have provided me?
- What is the legacy that I want to leave others?
- What ‘one line’ do I want written about me in ten years? What is the ‘one line’ that would be written about me today?
As you sit with these questions, others might well emerge from within you – or be provided to you by others or by events that unfold in your life – I invite you to make note of them and then engage them when you are ready to do so – at minimum I invite you to ‘hold’ the questions and as the great German poet, Rilke, suggests: ‘Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.’
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