The question I stopped asking

Because I thought I already knew

Hey love,

I’m writing this after one of my morning walks at the park. You know, the kind where it looks like I’m just getting my steps in, but really I’m having a little muttering conversation in my head.

Lately, I’ve been looking at questions. Actual questions. The kind that create space instead of quietly carrying around an answer we’ve already decided is true.

And I’ve been noticing how quickly I can stop asking and start concluding.

Many of you may know this, especially if you’ve ever been on a Zoom call with me in the past, but I used to vape.

Before that, I smoked cigarettes for years. It wasn’t something I was particularly proud of. It started as an escape when I was younger and working in busy restaurants and hair salons. Back then, it felt like the only people who actually got a break were the people who needed to go outside and smoke, so I started smoking.

At first it was an escape from work, and somewhere along the way it became a little escape from life too.

Then vaping came along and felt like a way to curb the thing I hated most about cigarettes, which was the taste and the smell. This does make you wonder why I smoked in the first place, but younger me apparently had her reasons.

And vaping was convenient. Really convenient.

I could vape pretty much anywhere other than airplanes, and honestly, I probably even figured out how to do that a few times.

Not proud. Just accurate.

Recently, though, I started having these really intense awarenesses around cancer. It seemed like everywhere I turned there was another story. It would show up in my social media feed, in movies, or in conversations people were having around me. Sometimes it was someone battling cancer, and other times it was a story about someone passing far too young.

It just became very loud in my world.

So I started asking questions.

Or at least I thought I was.

Because somewhere in the intensity of everything I was perceiving, I stopped wondering and decided it must be about me.

I made the awareness about my body and the choice I was making by vaping.

So I quit.

And I don’t regret that choice for one second. I’m actually incredibly grateful I made it.

Side note: the only tool I used to quit was the power of acknowledgment, which still blows my mind a little. There is definitely another Add Wonder hiding in that story, so more on that another time.

What brought this whole conversation about questions back into my awareness was finding out recently that someone close to me is now looking at whether or not they may receive a cancer diagnosis.

And something in me went…

Wait.

What if all of that awareness I was having wasn’t actually about me?

What if I was simply aware of something that was intense, and because I could perceive it so strongly, I immediately made it personal?

That’s the part I haven’t been able to stop looking at.

I had awareness, and then I gave the awareness meaning.

Once I decided what it meant, I stopped asking.

And I’m starting to see how often I do that in other places too.

We can perceive something so clearly, have a feeling that seems incredibly strong, or become aware of an energy that we can’t quite explain, and instead of staying curious long enough for more information to show up, we rush in and define it.

Then we call the definition our awareness.

What if the awareness was actually much bigger than the conclusion we put around it?

What if a question isn’t supposed to immediately deliver an answer?

Maybe the real power of asking is being willing to leave enough space for information to continue arriving without trying to organize it too quickly into something we already understand.

Because in this situation, making the awareness about me still created something that contributed to my life. I chose to stop vaping, and I’m genuinely grateful for that.

So perhaps it was a win either way.

But it has made me wonder how much more I might have been able to receive if I had kept asking instead of deciding I already knew what the awareness meant.

And that’s what I’m exploring right now.

How do I become a better question?

How do I allow awareness to give me information without immediately needing to turn it into a conclusion?

And what becomes possible when I’m willing to wonder a little longer?

🌟 Your Add Wonder Tools

Here are a few questions I’m playing with this week:

• Where am I turning an awareness into a conclusion before I have all the information?

• Is what I’m perceiving actually mine, or am I simply aware of something?

• What have I already decided this means?

• If I didn’t need an immediate answer, what else could I become aware of here?

• What do I know that I haven’t allowed myself to know yet?

Maybe the gift of a question isn’t that it immediately gives us an answer.

Maybe the gift is that it keeps the door open long enough for something we never could have concluded our way into to finally find us.

Until next time, may your questions stay bigger than your conclusions, and may your morning walks continue pretending they’re only about exercise.

With wonder, 💛