Asking Beautiful Questions
Time to read: under 2 minutes
I have never met a boring person, ever. I have, however, had many boring conversations, and I’ve walked away from these boring conversations pondering: How did that happen?
In my role at Arts Commons, I work with teachers and students to conceptualize an immersive arts-focused session or a week-long field study - often with a focus on journaling. A large part of how I go about doing this is through asking questions. It seems to me if you ask a good question, you will get a good answer.
In an effort to answer my own question of “How did that happen?”, I started to listen closer to how conversations unfold; the good and the boring. What I’ve found is a good story and a good conversation often begin at the same place: with a beautiful question. Everyone has a million brilliant stories inside of them and they only need a single beautiful question to release it into the world. The question becomes the key to an entire universe of lived experience that is both recognizable, and surprising.
When I began to pay closer attention to what story-evoking questions have in common, I noticed that beautiful questions always have three basic components, no matter the field of study or context:
1) They are open-ended questions
2) They have structure, like a timeframe or category
And most importantly, a beautiful question will:
3) Illuminate the person being asked without exposing them
Developing a journaling practice is a great way to begin to metabolize the more difficult questions the wide world is asking us right now. Yet it can be difficult to know where to begin - if you’ve ever opened to the first page of an empty journal you know it can be daunting. However, if you start with a beautiful question, the pages seem to fill themselves and you might find yourself surprised to meet the self-revealed in your practice.
One of my favourite series of questions is to explore turning emotions into sensations. For example: If happiness had a taste, what would it taste like? If happiness were a sound, what would it sound like? A smell? A touch? And finally, if it were a painting or a scene what would it look like?
I often change the emotions and ask the same questions: What would anxiety sound like? Taste like? If it were something you could hold, what would it feel like?
These kinds of questions always serve up a dose of poetry (often with a side of humour) and for students they can be incredibly useful tools for developing characters in a story, as well as for examining and understanding themselves and the ever-changing world around them.
Our physical senses afford us a way of communicating our lived experience. And that to me, is the most beautiful thing any of us have to offer.
