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     %LEAD QUESTION ATTITUDE ASSUME LANGUAGE FRIEND 891114

     When things are not going well it is good to ask  new
questions which may lead to a recognition of what  changes
you yourself can make on your own.  The difficulty is that
the  first  change which you may need to make  is  to  ask
fundamentally  different  kinds of questions than you  and
your friends are accustomed to ask.

     Our  customary  friends,   attitudes,   language  and
patterns  of thought and feeling lead us into asking  only
traditional kinds of questions.  If such leadings do  lead
us away from asking the new kinds of questions which might
in  turn  lead  us  to  recognize  the  changes  which  we
ourselves need to make---then we are fundamentally misled,
and  we  cannot find the answers which we need to  put  to
use.

     We  need  to spend times in which we seek to  explore
fundamentally  different  kinds  of  friends,   attitudes,
languages and patterns of thought and feeling.  If we  are
always  unaware  of that which is fundamentally  different
from that to which we are accustomed, we are imprisoned in
that to which we are accustomed. We cannot then be free to
choose  to  give careful  consideration  to  fundamentally
different alternatives,  if we are totally unaware of them
through collusions, repression or over-specialization.

     Our  lives  cannot change for the better if we  never
take  the initiative to expose ourselves to  fundamentally
different alternatives.  Yet, we may fear to be confronted
by  that which is fundamentally different,  and which  may
reveal  to  us the inadequacy of that which we have for  a
long time considered to be totally adequate.

     We  may hesitate   to   discover  that  those unknown
people  whom  we have feared and regarded as our  enemies,
are people who do in fact enjoy insights and  perspectives
which  we have needed to enjoy all along.  That  would  be
embarrassing!  We like to avoid embarrassment, so we avoid
exposing    ourselves    to    fundamentally     different
alternatives.  Thus we imprison ourselves in that which is
familiar.   We do not seek to ask fundamentally  different
questions   which  might  revolutionize   our   attitudes,
feelings,  patterns of heart and mind,  and our whole ways
of life.

                                                                                                                               
                         (c) 2005 by Paul A. Smith in      
                    (On Being Yourself, Whole and Healthy)  
                                                                                                                               
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