Ask me why
(Baonghean) - The questions we never ask others, are sometimes the questions no one ever asks themselves. How we feel, what we think, what we want to do. You will never find the answer if you don't ask questions.
I have a friend who always asks strange questions. For example, one time he asked me:
- Hey, why do people always offer sticky rice and chicken?
- I don't know either, maybe it's tradition! But why do you ask?
- Ah, because I don't like to eat chicken. All my life I've eaten all kinds of meat except chicken. When I die, my children and grandchildren won't feed me anything but chicken. That's really tough. Just thinking about it makes me miserable...
But that question is still "easy" to accept, but like the time he asked me why boys don't like to use condoms, I just wanted to take off my sandals and stuff them in his mouth.
- Maybe using a condom doesn't feel as real?
- So how does it really feel?
- How would I know, I'm not a boy. Why don't you ask the boys?
So he trotted off to ask some boys. I heard that the guys who were asked were stunned for a long time when they heard my friend's sensitive question.
One day, unable to bear its strange questions, I retorted: Why do you always ask such strange questions? It answered me with another question: Don't you ever wonder what the world looks like from another person's perspective?
Yeah, it seems like all of its questions come from a curiosity to know, to understand, to explore people and things from their perspective, not through one's own subjective judgment. When faced with the same event or phenomenon, each person has a different way of perceiving and reacting. Not to mention that each person lives a separate life, no two are alike. My today and your today are both today, but they are two completely independent days. If so, then your today has many things that make me curious. The problem is, have I ever wondered about your today? I guess not. All I care about is how my today is and equate it with the Today that everyone is living. For example, if I won the lottery today, I would want this day to repeat itself tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that… When it is very possible that today, somewhere in the world, a terrible disaster will occur, taking countless lives. And that is how we impose our worldview on everyone else. How selfish. How cruel.
And I also discovered something else, that by asking questions to others, we are pushing them to find answers they have never thought of. Try asking your mother about her hobbies and the things that make her happy and see that she cannot answer right away but has to think and hesitate for a long time. Try asking your lover or wife about how they feel when they have their period and see that they will be confused in finding the exact words to describe the feeling they experience every month. Try asking your children about the person they want to be in five or ten years and see that they will struggle to choose between what they want and what they know you want from them... The questions that we never ask others, sometimes are also questions that no one has ever asked themselves. About how we feel, what we think, what we want to do. You will never find the answer if you do not ask questions.
Now, as I write these lines, I think of my friend’s question about offering sticky rice and chicken. Suddenly, the question doesn’t seem so strange anymore. I suddenly think, if my friend dies tomorrow, maybe I will offer him a large cup of milk tea with full toppings.