The Big Questions
Why do we call these questions BIG? Because they are.
They take up space, and do so boldly and audaciously.
Socrates was put on trial by the Athynians for his habit of asking disconcerting questions and “corrupting the young”. He was sentenced to death for this.
In other words:
Big Questions shake things up.
Love the questions
the big Questions:
Hurt. They are deliberately difficult. They provoke a healthy amount of trepidation that can keep you up all night, and might even allow you, if you are lucky, to come slightly undone.
Spark your curiosity, they have a little pepper and fire and spice things up.
Lead to places away from home. They propel you to move in different directions. And then come back again.
Re-frame the way in which you live in the world and shift your focus.
Ask you to consider living differently.
Have consequence. They have weight and chutzpah to them.
Are the keys that cause the secret doors of the psyche to swing open wide.
Don’t attempt to solve anything or find solutions, quick fixes. Their gifts are in revealing what you don’t already know.
Have no clear answers. One Big Questions begets another question and pretty soon they have multiplied like rabbits :) and you amongst them have fallen like Alice down the rabbit hole…
Live the questions
“I want to beg you, as much as I can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”
Rilke writes in “Letters to a Young Poet”
Send us your big questions
At the end of every day, Finishing School asks you:
“Have you asked a good question today?”
If you have (and we sincerely hope you have) then, please, please, please, share it with us here AND Connect with us on Instagram to find out when we will be hosting Big Questions Live.