What questions have changed your life?

It wasn’t a question. It was a private comment made my another Fluther.

I know I’ve answered this before, but I’m at work and on my iPhone so I can’t search it right now…

Will you marry me?

Is it okay to be gay?

The answer was a strong affirmative.

The question “Why”? has been known to change a fe things for me….don’t ask “Why?“lol!

Questions I asked myself:

1. Will I love my children when there born?
2. Will I regret changing my job?
3. Will I regret that last zambooka?

I can’t really think of any questions that other poeple have asked me that had a profound affect on my thoughts or actions. Only questions I’ve asked myself.

Maybe these are the only questions that matter?

Will you marry me?
Do you want a divorce?
Will that be all, M’am?
Can I move back home, Mom?

This is a very good question. And here, I hope, is a very good answer.

Twenty years ago I learned a new “type” of question to ask—or a new way to ask old questions. That is, to ask “enabling” instead of “disabling” questions.

For example, if you ask (such as people always do when they’re upset with another person or organization), “What’s wrong with you people?” That leads to a lot of answers and “possible reasons why this or that person is fucked up”, but it doesn’t lead (not directly, anyway) to “improvement”. But if you were to ask, instead, “How could we make this experience [or process, or product, or person, whatever it is] better?” then answering that question does lead, and often with astonishing rapidity and ease, to actual solutions.

So now I try to always ask myself questions that lead to “good things”, “improvement” and “betterment”: “What’s right about… X?” or “What do I like about… X?” and always, always, always, “How can I improve, fix or resolve… X?”

I know how sappy some of this sounds. Believe me, when I first heard it I thought this was just pop psychology mumbo-jumbo nonsense. But trust me, this has absolutely turned my life around. I can always find improvements, better solutions, workable answers to all kinds of problems (maybe not “the best” answer all the time; I’m nowhere near perfect) ... because that’s where I point my mind.

If you point it to look for problems, then you will certainly find them. But if you point it toward solutions, it will find those, too. It’s all a matter of perspective.

Now when I intentionally ask “What is wrong with… X?” it’s just as a game or diversion or biting sarcasm; it’s not my perspective on life any more, and it never will be.

“does darwinian evolution make sense?” (fyi, the answer was “yes”)

“Have you ever really considered that life is too short?” That one really threw a monkey wrench into my plans for living forever!

@CyanoticWasp
that first question might be welcomed in the corporate world, or on a cancer ward, but I dare you to try it when a mans pointing a gun at your head for no other reason than he’s having a bad day~

@ninjacolin
darwinian evolution make perfect sense right up untill you ask the question, can a cell survive without its nucleus?
Or can the cell re-write its own DNA?

you’re gonna have to explain yourself there pazza. maybe start a new thread? message me when you do

The subtly life-changing ethical issue I mentioned elsewhere just now takes the form of a question.

“If you feel no compassion, and you can get away with harming people for your own gain, why be a good person?”

I’m determined to find a satisfactory answer to this. It would be a severe blow to my faith in humanity if I can’t.

There’s another question I’ve resolved recently, partly right here on Fluther, that changed my life somewhat.

“How can I come to terms with the fact that some of my friends are religious people?”

@ninjacolin
@Pazza
I second the new thread suggestion. Please don’t turn this into another evolution defence thread.

@Chatfe
One question I asked myself a while ago I just remembered really did change my life, and my view of life and ultimate purpose. I wrote the following shortly after the experience:

GOD CREATED MAN IN HIS OWN IMAGE.
HIS IMAGE IS THE UNIVERSE.
THEREFORE GOD IS NOT A MAN, GOD IS MAN, AND GOD IS THE UNIVERSE.

Date: August 2007
Location: IBC Luton, home of the Movano van.
Work Occasion: IBC summer shutdown.

I’ve spent a couple years searching for God, a quest I think most people spend I lifetime on. In actuality I wasn’t convinced I couldn’t find him on the internet. I say him, but what God would do with gender is beyond me. However, after watching many varying documentaries, I was starting to get a bit disheartened. Until August 2007 when working in IBC fitting a steel floor, and supervising a work crew on site my mind started
to wander as usual. I was mulling over oppressive religions and getting mildly pissed at them, I mean most religions revolve around the philosophy that ‘You must go to church’ or you’ll basically go to hell. Anyway whilst pondering my own fate, a phrase I’d heard a few times was looping in my mind and it goes something like this:

‘Look under any stone, or fell any tree, and you will find me.’

Don’t quote me on it by the way, but this phrase supposedly came straight out of the gospel according to Christ. A gospel that also, supposedly is being held somewhere never to see the light of day for whatever religious purpose.

As I started to contemplate if it was said, what the message actually was, I had the most amazing epiphany that sent goose pimples shooting down my arms and legs and raised the hairs on the back of my neck, and as I leant on the tubular steel barrier in front of me, It occurred to me that I was surrounded by God, that God is omnipresent because God is everything and everything is God.

The message I think is this, you don’t have to go to church to be close to or as one with the creator of all life, as he/she, is all around you. God is woven into your very consciousness.

That being said, don’t think I’m trying to get all the church goers to abandon their place of worship. People need symbols, a place to feel welcome. Nobody wants to be alone in their acknowledgement of a higher being. In fact I envy them to a degree because they have faith enough to just believe, were as I still search for concrete proof.

I’m not kidding though, I really did have an epiphany!..............
And no, it’s not a bowl dysfunction!

Two questions (or 6, depending how you look at it):
1. So what?
2. Why? (x5)

When the preacher said; “Do you take this woman ?” ...I said yes…. three weeks letter I filed and got an annulment .... decided that I NEVER want to be married or tied down again .

Who are you?

I’m not referring to your name or your race or your religion or your occupation or your gender or your body or anything else you identify or associate with.

Who…are…YOU?

Found It!
http://www.fluther.com/disc/45849/what-has-been-the-most-enlightening-question-in-your-life/

Seriously, why does the Fluther search tool suck so horribly? After unsuccessful searching – using exact terminology from my response – I had to search through my email to find a note I sent to the person who asked me one of those questions, then scroll back through some 30+ pages of my Activity to locate that Question! Blargh!) >.<

When a friend asked “Did you know that I am gay?” and I said “Sure. So what?” That was the first time I realized how powerful acceptance really is.

@hearkat
Fluther has no search tool. It only has a frustration tool that masquerades as a search tool.

@Fyrius: Well if that’s the case, it’s incredibly effective! After over 2 years here, I’ve amassed a huge library of replies, and I have tried looking for several of them on numerous occassions with futile results, and wanting to scream at Bendrewim out of frustration!

Why am I here and what does it mean.

@Fyrius
“If you feel no compassion, and you can get away with harming people for your own gain, why be a good person?”

I don’t know how accurate this statistic is, but a study was done to find out how many people in scociety were incapable of feeling empathy, and the answer came back as about 1 in 100 (I think), I think these people account for pedophiles rapists etc.

Unfortunately a lot of these people (in my opinion) have ended up in government.
So in answer to your question (but not perhaps not satisfactorily) there is no reason to be ‘a good person’ if you don’t feel, or are incapable of feeling empathy/compassion, I think its that simple.

As for evolution, it needs no defence, its the uneditable darwinian version of evolution that says its merely natural selection (and all that that implies), that now has to stand up to scrutiny. I was on www.ted.com and watching a lecture about cells and how they function and replicate which casts doubt on natural selection, I can’t find it right now, but when I do I’ll start a new thread.

My life has been filled with “live changing” questions and answers. In fact, it is the ultimate answer to the question “what is the meaning of life”.

@YARNLADY Oh, that’s easy: 42.

“Do you want to press charges?” This is what the cop asked me after arresting my boyfriend who had just tried to kill me. My answer was “Abso-fucking-lutely!”

@CyanoticWasp—It took me awhile, but now I recognize the actual implication of 42.

@YARNLADY I was actually surprised to see that it was explained in the Wikipedia article on “The Meaning of Life” (I googled “meaning of life 42”) and found “the answer” there:

In popular culture

The mystery of life and its meaning is an often recurring subject in popular culture, featured in entertainment media and various forms of art. Charles Allan Gilbert’s All is Vanity depicts a young woman gazing at her reflection in a mirror, but all is positioned in such a way as to make the image of a skull appear.

In Douglas Adams’ popular comedy book series The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything has the numeric solution of 42, which was derived over seven and a half million years by a giant supercomputer called Deep Thought. After much confusion from the descendants of his creators, Deep Thought explains that the problem is that they do not know the Ultimate Question, and they would have to build an even more powerful computer to determine what that is.

@CyanoticWasp—There is still more – the story ends with the revealtion that the question is “what is 6×9 and therefore, the main character says “I always knew there was something fundamentally wrong with the universe”.

@Pazza
That would be a depressing conclusion. Perhaps you’re right. I’m still going to continue looking for a possible reason for a while.

Incidentally, I’m pretty sure at least contemporary evolutionary biology doesn’t believe natural selection is the sole driving force of evolution. There are other pressures too, like sexual selection making attractive mates more successful, and kin selection making protective parents more successful, for example.
Darwin published his book 150 years ago, and science moves on. Nobody believes he was right about everything. His ideas have been corrected, elaborated, replaced and specified.
Please take that into consideration when you start your thread.