We used to live in a world of answers. We knew when we put dates on our calendars, they happened. We knew school would be open in the morning and that our kids would be there all day long. We knew the airport would be open for our next business trip or family vacation. Our world of certainty was steady and we could depend on the answers to questions that were as simple as “What’s the plan for today?”
Answers can be limiting
While some kinds of answers are important to help us organize our time and keep moving forward, sometimes answers can be limiting especially when they presume “this is how it is.” Sometimes that certainty can line up too closely to a far more limiting sentiment: “this is the only way it can be.”
This year, the way things are has been thrown into a big fat question mark and each day parents everywhere have had to answer the main question, Ayeka? Where am I today? Where are we? How can I meet today’s demands? And what are the internal resources I can draw on to keep going?
Questions, especially the kinds that we are not used to asking, can open up places within us that usually remain closed when we are in a world in which answers rule the day.
This past year we asked so many new questions like:
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”How can I be more creative about connecting to the elders in my life even though we have to remain so far apart?”
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“How can we make the most of stay-at-home vacation and see where we live with new eyes?
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“How can I remember, and remind my kids, that today was hard, but tomorrow may be better?
Open our imagination
Questions can open up our imagination to a reality we have not yet explored. In short, questions can help lead us toward our own liberation.
With Passover approaching, I am thinking about the traditional 4 questions we ask on Seder night. This year there will be so many new questions we can ask that can help us reflect and take stock of the year that passed.
Next week I will be sharing a set of reflective questions that I will be asking around my Seder table. I invite you to do the same.
Stay tuned and blessings for the journey ahead,
Dasee
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