Some Questions That Stayed With Me

Therapy has made me suspicious of answers that arrive too quickly. Answers have their place, of course. Sometimes there is a problem to solve, a decision to make, something that needs to change. But some questions seem to do something else. They stay. They follow me out of the therapy room, occasionally collide with something I am reading or living, disappear for months and then return altered. I have collected a few of them over the years. I don’t know anymore which were asked of me, which emerged between two people trying to understand something, and which became mine somewhere along the way. These are ten that have stayed.

1. What allows a human being to remain open to love, truth and freedom after suffering?

2. How do two human beings continue to inhabit the same wound without denying each other’s humanity?

3. What is life asking of me?

4. What can I say so that they feel heard?

5. How do I know whether I am staying because I love someone or because I am afraid to leave?

6. What if I forgive someone and still don’t want them back?

7. How do I grieve something I chose to leave?

8. What if the person I worked very hard to become is no longer the person I want to be?

9. Which parts of myself are actually mine and which ones have I simply called mine?

10. Can a life be good enough even if it never becomes the life I thought I was going to have?