Question Everything
Curiosity is the first step towards healing. Asking yourself questions like "Where is this coming from?" or even "What am I feeling right now?" Or "When was the first time I felt this way?" can open your life up in the most beautiful and unexpected ways. Unpack, analyze, and research your own experience. You’ll be shocked at what you learn, how you grow, and how much you really can love yourself.
Because of the white-supremacist-capitalist-cis-hetero-patriarchy, we're so conditioned to not feel our feelings, to lock into the life escalator, and not think too far outside of the day-to-day pay-to-play karmic hamster wheel of "life." As children--at least when you have authoritative caregivers--we are often punished for asking "Why?" But the impulse to ask why is an innate one. We are thinking, feeling, discerning, questioning beings. We have access to our consciousness in a way that feels mystical, in a way that–as far as we know– no other earthly beings have. I think it’s a freakin’ miracle, but for people who bristle at such things, you have to admit, it is at the very least a profound gift, a fortuitous accident, idk. So why not use it? Bask in it. Be grateful and have reverence for it. Question joyfully, question often, question everything!
I find a lack of curiosity unbecoming, at best, and dangerous, at worst. The personality that says “I am going to cling to the way things are and I Do Not Care To Know Why. It is what it is. That’s the way I am, take it or leave it” is a very challenging one for me to deal with. Someone else’s rigidity should have no bearing on me, but when you’re relating to someone deeply UNcurious, your curiosity becomes an active threat to their rigidity. This brings conflict, and when you’re having conflict with someone who lacks self-awareness, things usually get a little tricky. They come at me, armed with society’s weapons (We Live In A Society!!) and usually trigger a deeply-rooted shame response. It can be so hard to live outside the status quo, when the message that you are Wrong and Weird and Deserve to be Rejected is reflected back to you from so many different directions. I always leave these interactions questioning my whole being and way of life, I wonder if I have a clear understanding of the world, I do a lot of considering and re-considering. I shed what I feel needs to be shed and recommit to what still feels right. Once I get myself regulated, I notice I walked away from this interaction a little shaken, using it as a mirror to check myself before I riggedy-wreck myself, and the rigid person feels righteous and affirmed, self-satisfied, proud of their doubling down. I am always left feeling like if your tower can be undone with simple questions, maybe it isn’t as enduring as you thought it was.
I have found this lack of curiosity in the deeply dogmatic, the intensely privileged, the controlling, the exclusionary, the Power-Over subset—all people who have a lot to lose in undoing hierarchies. A huge red flag for me is any person, power structure, or spiritual system that says, “Don't question me.” Blind faith has never been my strong suit; I prefer to lead with a question, with curiosity, and should I witness something that inspires belief, I welcome it. If not, I keep it pushing. Even then, sometimes my lack of belief prompts me to want to investigate why others believe it. Regardless of where curiosity leads me, it always teaches me something about the world, other people, the universe, and myself. It really is that simple. It really is that complex.
Fear of the other is an example of rigidity. The ego says I DON’T NEED ANY NEW INFORMATION!! I DON’T NEED MY WORLDVIEW ROCKED!! I REJECT ANY THREAT TO MY SENSE OF SELF AND ITS PLACE IN THE WORLD!! This is what happens with terfs, capitalists, and white supremacists alike (funny how…close that Venn diagram is). It’s the modus operandi of the Christo-Fascist far right. They have to keep a wide array of dehumanized identities in their back pocket, otherwise, who will they scapegoat for all the problems they created? This is a good example of why taking responsibility is a revolutionary act. Make yourself aware of where you cause harm, allow others to show you the places you overlook, be open to the reality collapse of recognizing your privilege. This can be part of your daily practice—and should be!! Being proactive with change is one thing that helps it feel less jarring when the big changes come calling. If all you’ve ever experienced is negative change, of course you’re afraid of it!! Microdose it with curiosity!
Why is a great place to start. Why do I do that? Why are things the way they are? Who decided they have to be that way? Do I agree with it? If I could design a life for myself, what would it look like? Am I happy? What do I want? What keeps me from getting it? What beliefs do I have about myself? Where did they come from? Do they actually resonate with me? What was I indoctrinated into? What did I choose for myself? The list of questions to start with is endless. Take some time, maybe write the answers in your journal or record a voice note for yourself. Doing a self-inventory like this can be huge for clarifying your values, boundaries, and goals. A deeper understanding of yourself can improve your confidence greatly. It gives you what you need to more deeply understand others, as well.
Question everything! Questioning doesn’t have to have a negative vibe, it can be extremely gentle, proactive, and positive. Just a gentle curiosity, nothing more. It does tend to have roots, so it can lead you to deeper places than you initially anticipate, but deeper is never a bad thing (😜). Allow yourself to explore! If you think and feel critically, if you engage with self-inventories often, you’ll avoid the experience of operating like a Sim, just regurgitating whatever rhetoric you think you’re supposed to, and running that buggy default operating system doesn’t serve anything but the white-supremacist-capitalist-cishetero-patriarchy. Tap into a holistic life, an intersectional understanding of the world. It will only make you kinder, gentler, and more self-loving. Everyone benefits when you do this work
Life rewards those who are open to life with rich experience. Rigidity is limiting in every possible way. Aligning with something you didn’t choose is a shortcut to a life filled with resentment and resentment has the worst fucking vibes. You can’t live your truth until you know what that truth is, and you can’t know until you investigate it, until you uncover all that isn’t true. This is hard work. There is so much grief to be felt at time lost, at pieces of yourself others denied you, at the way we’ve constructed a way of being that is so detrimental to our spirits. Grief is meant to be felt. It’s a way of honoring what was lost. Mourn it, release it, commit to being staunch in your authenticity, and in your divine right to change your mind. Honor your autonomy, use it to build an interdependent community. Learn to love without losing yourself. Learn to have faith outside of dogma, doctrine, two-party political theater, constructs like the gender binary, or any other Should that does nothing but hinder the natural, fluid nature of a spiritual being having a human experience. What a joke!! To limit the limitless!! Talk about self-sabotage.
I will leave you with my favorite Bruce Lee monologue, which I listen to when I get all blocked up and forget to flow, or when someone else’s expectations of me tempt me to compartmentalize my multifacetedness. Fuck that. Be water, my friend.
Listen Here!
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