Ask
Someone dear to me gave me an unusual gift for Christmas. It was a card in the shape of a doorway, which opened to reveal, in this person’s angular scrawl, the following.
Question:
Answer:
“What in the world is this?” I said.
“It’s your question and my answer,” he said. “You ask me any question you want, and I have to answer it.”
“Any question?”
“Any question in the world,” he said. “And I will answer completely and honestly.”
* * *
It’s been two weeks now and I still haven’t asked the question because I’m still trying to think of one. And not because I can’t think of one, but because I can think of a thousand.
What do you love? What makes you happy? Where do you see yourself fifty years from now? What’s your biggest fear? What’s your wildest dream?
I’ve known this person a long time, so from longevity alone you might think I know him well. Maybe I do. But maybe I don’t. He is reserved. He goes his own way. He keeps his own counsel. There are times when I look at him and wonder, fiercely, what he’s thinking about.
What have you thought about the most, thought about the hardest, in your life?
That would be a good question, but it’s not the right question. It’s not the best question.
* * *
Some questions have to do with me more than the person who gave me this gift. They are questions about the two of us together, about things that happened to us or around us or between us in the past. The answer to one of these questions might give me a deeper sense of how he thinks of me. Or what he thinks of me. Or how some of the things I did long ago have stayed with him, in a bad or a good way.
But none of those questions is one I will ask, because the answer would have to do with me and not him. A question born of insecurity or self-wonderment is not the right question.
* * *
I once belonged to a group of people, eight or ten of us, who met once every couple of weeks for a few months. None of us knew each other; we met as strangers. We put on name tags at each meeting and sat in a circle of chairs. Every meeting was the same: one of us read a question aloud while the rest of us listened.
Then we sat together and thought. You could take as much time as you wanted to think about the question because there was no requirement beyond thinking. If, at some point during the hour, you wanted to answer the question, or talk about it in a non-answery sort of way, you could do so.
There was no set order to responses. Most of the time, most of the people in the group spoke. But not always.
What was so unusual about this group was that there was no conversation beyond listening. We sat and listened as each person spoke, sometimes haltingly, sometimes at length, sometimes with tears or laughter. Then we resumed our shared silence. Conversation –that give and take, the familiar nodding and murmurs of assent or comfort or I get what you’re saying sounds– was not allowed. The focus was on listening, deep, absorbed listening.
I think about that group, and what I learned from it about how to listen, and how to see, and how to understand other people, even strangers I don’t know, every day.
* * *
The right question would be a question whose answer would have nothing to do with me and everything to do with him. An answer that I would listen to, in silence, and absorb.
The best question might feel, to him, like the tagline to one of my favorite movies: Everyone wants to be found.
And now I’m thinking of a beautiful poem that I read a few years ago in the middle of winter, before the sun was up. Here it is.
With that Moon Language
- Hafiz*
Admit something:
Everyone you see, you say to them, “Love me.”
Of course you do not do this out loud; otherwise,
someone would call the cops.
Still, though, think about this, this great pull in us
to connect.
Why not become the one who lives with a full moon
in each eye that is always saying,
with that sweet moon language
what every other eye in this world is dying to hear?
*(translated by Daniel Ladinsky)
