On Being the One with All the Questions

Because I'm for sure never going to be the one with all the answers

I have a small Kraft paper notebook which I’m gradually filling with questions.

Not, as you might think, so that at some point I can answer them all, but rather so they can exist as curious touchstones, for use in creating the most conscious, interesting {to me!} life I can; suspended, open ended, inviting.

I don’t know when I started becoming obsessed with questions.

To all intents and purposes, I’m someone who likes answers. I have historically found open loops difficult-to-unbearable to coexist with. I have a very curious brain that likes to know things, to the point where I’m now actively trying to break the habit of always whipping out my phone to ‘just Google that quickly’.

And then at some point I fell so deeply in love with questions, I started relishing them as a kind of art form.

I learned how a carefully worded question can bring an answer you actually want to hear {even if not the one you thought you wanted}, when navigating relationships. Or at least one that can generate further discussion, and open doors to previously unconsidered possibilities.

I learned that asking myself questions about my thoughts, desires, needs, habits, and beliefs could open up new avenues of thought, inspiration, and the potential for change. New questions, even. Like a hall of mirrors, where every mirror is a question that reveals another question, and another, into infinity.

As an artist, questions have helped me grow and develop, created a way forward when I’ve been stuck, supported me in taking brave steps.

Asking questions keeps me nimble, humble - if it’s not the opposite of humble to call yourself humble? There’s a question - and open.

Actually yes, it does keep me humble, because the more questions I ask, the more I understand that I barely know anything at all, and even less for certain.

But I can always ask a question.

When I first landed in Substack, I almost immediately rediscovered Beth Kempton, whom I met many moons ago at a creative retreat she organised. I read my way through her archives here, took one of her courses, about getting started on Substack {available free until September 30th 2025}, and listened to her podcast on dog walks, before reading her book, Kokoro. {What a magical rabbit hole, all of it. Highly recommend.} Something that glowed repeatedly like a beacon for me amongst all I learned and absorbed was what Beth said about questions:

“I don’t write books because I have all the answers. I write books because I have so many questions.”

She talks about writing as a means of waking up, which lines up beautifully with my experience of the power of questions, and with how my own life path has unfolded. When I read that, I felt a big resonant gong of yes inside me.

Maybe I too could write books, because really all I have are questions?

{I’ve actually written a couple, self published, for artists, and a book of poems. It’s not that I don’t count those, more that they’re a separate thing in my mind. Hard to explain, and clearly I haven’t asked myself enough questions about this!}

I’ve been thinking a lot about the possibilities of memoir recently, and about how and why the genre fascinates me so much. Please recommend any you’ve loved - memoirs or books about writing memoirs - and say why, if you can articulate it. {I can’t always say why I loved a book; sometimes the highest compliment I can pay an author is simply that I did.} If I’m going to even entertain the notion beyond a vague wondering, I’d like to learn what would make it a worthwhile and satisfying read. I have questions! I’m stalling because of the usual creative stumbling blocks; I don’t know why anyone outside my own family would want to read a memoir about me, or what I’d say, or if I’m actually capable of doing a decent job of it. It may not even be about writing one myself; often my questions and curiosities lead to places other than the ‘obvious’ answer. But I remain fascinated, and am letting it be an unanswered question for the time being.

I want to share some of my favourite questions, as a kind of offering. I’ve been flipping through my notebook, although I already know the first one I’d put forward. It’s not very original, and is well known in the artistic community, but may be the most powerful question of all:

What if…..?

It’s not even a full question, but part of its beauty is that you get to add whatever you want to complete it. It opens a crack in something that perhaps felt impenetrable before, and that’s all we need sometimes. For me, in the studio, it’s usually some variation of “What if I tried doing it this way / mix this with this / add this / take this away / do this other thing I haven’t tried before?”.

Like any profound, potentially life transforming question, it seems innocuous and basic; too simple to be truly meaningful or effective. Until you start trying it out. What if I took a different route today? What if I said something different this time? What if I said no? Or yes? Or nothing at all? What if I asked for help with this? What if I trusted that I know what to do?

There are infinite what if questions.

“questions
that can make
or unmake
a life.”

From Sometimes, by David Whyte

Some other questions I love, to ask oneself or others:

• What is interesting here?

• Could this be different? And how?

• What am I being invited to notice here?

• How is this for me?

• Where is my attention going and is that where I want it?

• What haven’t I tried?

• What if I’m wrong about that?

• What am I avoiding?

• What question{s} is life asking of me right now?

• Or, said another way, what is the conversation I’m participating in with life?

• Why not me?

• What is a good question to ask here? {Where ‘good’ means whatever we need it to mean - clarifying, generative, disruptive, simplifying, opening etc}

Here’s another one for artists and creators of all kinds:

• What would I make {even} if no one would ever see it?

And here are three potentially life changing questions you can ask every day, I believe from A Course in Miracles:

Where would you have me go?

What would you have me do?

What would you have me say, and to whom?

I don’t necessarily use questions as prompts for journalling. I’ve rarely found that to be helpful for me, and the way I journal doesn’t need it, unless they come up during the writing. More often I just carry my questions around with me in the back - or front - of my mind or heart, or write them on post it notes and stick them round the house.

Sometimes answers come in the form of no longer needing to ask a particular question. Maybe it made itself moot, or lost its relevancy, or I integrated whatever I was seeking in asking it.

Perhaps some questions are for generating answers, and some are for living with, without expectation or even need of that. Perhaps some questions will never be answered, or are not meant to be.

Which of course brings to mind the famous Rilke quote:

“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.”

Rainer Maria Rilke, from Letters to a Young Poet

Every question is a portal. We wield such unexplored magical powers, and we have no idea how full of potential we are. But questions can help us start to find out.

What’s your favourite question? Have you ever thought about questions in this way? I’d love to hear some new-to-me questions to add to my notebook.