What Question Is Your Life Asking You Right Now?
Sometimes the question we're trying to answer isn't the one that's shaping our lives.
Most of us spend enormous energy looking for answers to the significant questions in our lives.
But perhaps before searching for an answer, we need to identify the question we’re actually living.
The question we struggle to answer may not be the right question at all.
A person may think she’s deciding whether to retire when the deeper question is, Who am I without my work?
Someone may be struggling with their relationship with their adult child when the real question is, If they no longer need me in the same way, what is my place in their life now?
Reeling from an unexpected job loss, a person naturally asks, How quickly can I find another job? But underneath may be something more unsettling: Do I still want the career I’ve spent years building?
Or even, If my employer no longer valued my contribution, what does that say about me?
After losing a partner to death, divorce, or disease, we may ask, How do I fill these suddenly empty days? When the deeper question is, What do I want, need, and hope for in this next chapter of my life?
These are the kinds of questions life presents. And how we respond to the questions beneath the obvious ones can shape the choices we make—and how those choices ultimately feel.
The wrong question can send us searching very competently for an answer that doesn’t solve what is actually troubling us.
I wrote recently in The Way We Name a Problem about how the way we define a problem shapes where we look for solutions.
This goes a step deeper: sometimes we haven’t yet discovered the question we’re really trying to answer.
Why can the deeper question be so difficult to recognize?
We may be too busy solving the immediate problem to wonder what lies beneath it. Sometimes habit keeps us asking the question we’ve always asked. And sometimes, I suspect, the practical question simply feels safer.
Should I retire? can be answered with spreadsheets, pension projections, and calendars.
Who will I be without the work, the relationships, and the place I’ve gone every day that have defined so much of my adult life?
That’s harder.
The deeper question may ask us to examine something we’d rather leave undisturbed—our identity, our relationships, our fears, and the assumptions we’ve carried for years.
Sometimes the practical question protects us from the more consequential one.
And then there are questions for which nothing is actually wrong.
I discovered that when I turned the question on myself. I didn’t have just one.
Am I making the right choices for this next chapter of my life?
What legacy am I leaving?...
Am I making the right choices for this next chapter of my life?
What legacy am I leaving?
Should I turn what I’ve learned over more than fifty-five years into a book—or several—and try to reach more people?
Am I putting enough energy into staying connected to a vibrant community and continuing to have new experiences?
And beneath all four, I found another:
How do I honor the quiet life that suits me without allowing my world to become smaller?
Not for me, a smaller world.
Because the quiet rhythm of my days suits my spirit. I am happy when I choose to be alone.
I don’t want to fill my life simply for the sake of filling it.
But neither do I want comfort to become an excuse for not following something that might matter.
Solitude and community.
Contentment and possibility.
A quiet life and meaningful contribution.
Accepting who I am and continuing to grow.
Beneath all of those tensions may be the question I will be living for some time:
How do I make the most of the life I’ve been given while honoring the way I genuinely want to live it?
I don’t think that’s a question I will answer once.
I’m living the answer—and periodically checking whether I’ve got the balance right.
Finding the real question doesn’t guarantee an answer.
Sometimes the value of the question is that it helps us steer.
—Susan
Continue the Conversation
The conversation doesn’t end with these weekly essays.
Many of the ideas I explore here continue in Substack Notes—in observations, questions, and ordinary moments that sometimes become the beginning of a future essay.
I share those thoughts in Substack Notes, where readers add their own experiences and perspectives. Some of my favorite conversations happen there.
If you’d like to join me, I’d love to have you there.
And this week, I’d love to know:
What question lies beneath the question you’ve been trying to answer?
You don’t need to have the answer. Sometimes recognizing the real question is enough to begin.
I’d love to hear what you discover in the comments.