The Mighty Question Mark
My favorite scene from the TV show Ted Lasso takes place in the first season. The titular character, Coach Ted, faces down the series’ main villain, Rupert, over a “gentlemanly” game of darts at a bar. Rupert has been smilingly insulting Ted and his soccer (English football) team for the entire scene, and Ted has a chance to fend him off with a bet on the dart game. Little does Rupert know, Ted is an expert darts player. As he’s putting Rupert in his place by precisely hitting the target each time, Ted makes a mini-speech in which he quotes Walt Whitman by saying, “Be curious, not judgmental.”
While the quote Ted uses is most likely misattributed, it’s still a pointed moment that calls out Rupert’s arrogance and bullying behavior, while reminding the audience that many things—and most people—are not as clear-cut as they seem. It’s also a theme that carries through the rest of the show as Ted’s leadership changes every main character’s lives (including his own) for the better.
Sometimes, all it takes to understand something or someone is asking the right questions, with the assumption that you don’t already know the answers. Great danger—destructive pride and selfishness—looms in a lack of proper understanding about the world.
Curiosity is part of who we are as a species. We are designed to search for truth and reality, even though we often settle for believing tasty lies and living in fantasies. Our exploratory nature is constantly proven through our proclivities for discovery, innovation, creation, and lots of other ‘ations. We even have a robot named Curiosity exploring the planet Mars for us.
But curiosity and its resultant understanding—the antidote to the potential danger of ignorance—can’t take place until we dive beneath the surface of ideas we don’t fully understand. Surface-level answers are comfortable, but they will often mislead us because they tend to be incomplete at best and inaccurate at worst.
Questions both protect us and help us grow. They guard us against lies and grifts (“Is this person manipulating me?”, “Is this email suspicious?”). They help us grow by making us research things we don’t know until we come to understand a significant truth (“Why is the sky blue?”, “Why did this apple fall on my head?”). Google has built a trillion-dollar empire on the human need to ask questions.
I ask myself questions all the time. Not because I lack self-esteem or am not confident in my identity, but because I find self-awareness revealing and empowering, even if it can also be scary at times. I want to be the best version of myself that I can be. One of the best ways for me to do that is to respond to things I discover within my own heart through the process of self-interrogation.
I also frequently ask questions about the world around me, because the more I understand someone or something, the better relationship I can have with that person or thing. I’ve done this since I was a child; many adults in my life thought I was an incredibly inquisitive boy.
Unfortunately, many people are afraid of asking questions.
They’re afraid of being proven wrong about something they thought they knew. They’re afraid of being labelled stupid or silly. They’re afraid of sitting with their own weird, crazy, and/or dark thoughts. They’re afraid of having to modify their opinions or belief systems because of the introduction of new information.
But I’ve come to believe that fear of knowledge will only weaken me. I can’t form a belief or opinion about something I don’t understand. I can’t figure out a proper response to a situation (even if the response is to do nothing) until I know as many of the relevant details as possible.
Asking questions like “Why?”—rather like a five-year-old child—helps us gain wisdom, be kinder and more compassionate, and realize that not knowing everything is ok.
Can all questions be answered completely or empirically? No. There is still a great deal of mystery in our world. Thank God for that!
But the more questions I ask, the better I’m able to understand the world and the people within it. And when I gain insight about things that matter, I’ll be able to make better choices.
So use the mighty question mark. Ask “Why?” like a five-year-old. Investigate the world. Interrogate yourself.
And do yourself a favor: be willing to accept the answers you find rather than the answers you want.