Telling vs. Asking

There are people who love to tell others what to do. Nothing is up for collaboration or discussion - the way they tell it is simply the way it is. Their opposite, the askers, are always asking what they should do. They want to know what is their best move and won't take any initiative to try something before they have permission.

Asking = passive, insecure
Telling = dominant, confident

It's not black and white, and certainly not a positive/negative dichotomy - and I know I don't fall fully into either category. For some things I am more of an asker, and other times I am more of a teller.

Sometimes I ask but don't wait to hear the answer, which I mentioned in a previous post. This usually does not result in success.

Sometimes I tell but won't consider other options, which might be due to my stubborn astrological sign (Aries). This also does not result in success.

When I need to ask a question, that's because I usually need to know the answer. But sometimes I ask questions that don't need to be asked. I could infer the answer from knowledge I already have, or I can easily gain that knowledge on my own. So why do I ask? And what happens when I ask so many questions that I can no longer tell which ones really need to be answered?

There's something about asking questions that I enjoy. I like to connect to people, with a mission of expanding knowledge - but I'm questioning whether or not asking too many questions and not giving equivalent answers is selfish. Like I mentioned in my other post, I'm not really retaining information if I'm asking too many questions, and if I'm asking endless questions that don't need to be asked, I'm also not aware of whether or not the questioned person is getting anything beneficial from our dialogue. Give and take should be equal.

And there's also the danger of relieving yourself of responsibility by asking so many questions of others. If it is everyone else's responsibility to provide you with the answer, you don't have to worry about taking action. I certainly don't like falling into that trap.

There's a point where the student needs to become the teacher. I was so well trained to be a student and it seems I'm having a hard time letting go of that. I need to be both a student and a teacher in my life.

So the real question that I keep asking and need to start answering - what do I have to teach?

...

Somewhat unrelated passive-aggressive notes that I found while looking for relevant passive and aggressive images to add into this post, that amused me too much to not include:

Asking Questions

I've always been one to ask a lot of questions. When I was young I remember asking question after question, wanting to understand 'what this means', 'how this works', and 'why this is'. My parents were willing to indulge my questions, but it wasn't too long after going to school that I started to develop negative correlations with my many questions.

When I was in school, I had a feeling of isolation from a number of my classmates. There were kids who weren't listening to the teacher, kids who were too intimidated or insecure to ask a question, or kids who weren't motivated enough to ask questions because they didn't realize the benefit questioning could have. Therefore, I felt alone as I stuck my hand high in the air, looking down at those other kids who were slumped down, trying to hide in their chairs.

This latter type of person, the unmotivated questioner, has become an epidemic that I see prevalent in a lot of people (of all ages) today. These people are acting on what they are being told, without questioning it enough to know why they are acting, or whether or not they prefer the action over another one they could freely choose.

It's easy to be pulled along, responding to what you are being told, believing the world is as the people around you are telling it is, and not worrying about other possibilities of existence. This is due to fear of too many options. To avoid overwhelm and failure, we settle.

I did and still do think that it's important to ask questions. I wouldn't have been able to self-motivate and create things for myself if I didn't know why contrasting behaviors wouldn't be beneficial. Trial and error is how we learn, and it involves questioning ourselves before, during and after our active choices. 

However. The next experience I began having in school as I got older, into high school, was a lack of encouragement by my teachers. Some teachers just wanted to get through their curriculum, other teachers probably felt that holding onto one topic for too long was appealing to the lowest common denominator when they needed to keep an average pace to appeal to the general population of students. Either way, many times I was sitting in class, with my hand raised for five minutes, the muscles slowly losing strength, only to have my teacher admit that they weren't going to call on me because I was asking too many questions.

"A symptom of not listening is asking too many questions". This is something that I wrote down the other day and it struck me. I've been having concerns about my focus and deeply listening - can there be too many questions?

I did stop asking so many questions as a result of being ignored (or so it felt) in class. And then, I realized that to many kids, it was cool to pass notes and not pay attention to the teachers. I was pulled into that world, where I began to perfect my skills of half-listening and multi-tasking.

So was it the teacher's fault? I don't suppose so - with a class full of students you can only answer so many from each of them. Was it my fault for not really listening and just trying to think of a question for everything I heard? I wouldn't imagine so - I was learning how to question and understand everything around me, all the time. What really happened, which was no one's fault, was that I went from one extreme, and once learning it was not ideal, went to the other extreme.

I keep coming back to balance. It's all one huge balancing act, and being too aggressive or too passive in the approach yields similarly unsuccessful results. And there isn't a spreadsheet with numerical limits to my questions to keep me aware of when I'm asking too many - "Oh! No, you asked 6 questions in the past 3 minutes. Sorry, you have to wait two minutes before you have another question in your queue."

Ha - spreadsheets and clearly outlined rules - of course I would ask for that.

I've been attempting to allow my questions to come through one at a time. It's sort of like eating: if I ask a question and sit with the response for a little bit, sometimes when I go to ask my next question I'll realize I'm 'full' sooner than I expected and I don't really need to ask the next question.

I need patience so I can review what I know and have just learned and make sure it stays in my mind, before I go and try to stuff more things in there. Previously, my technique involved replacing the thing I had learned before with the new thing I just learned. Didn't make for creating broader contexts from which more knowledge could be inferred.

Speaking slowly and asking questions slowly - I definitely sound like I'm from the west coast now :-)

Archetype

Which archetypes are present in you?

There are a lot of different studies/books that refer to archetypes and the different elements of our being that can be defined by those specific, universal characters that everyone has within them to varying degrees. It's a wonderful way to help categorize the self, and to personify those elements of your being which are so dynamic and have so much control over you that they certainly may as well be their own entities. 

I've done a lot of work in the study of archetypes, and I find the notion to be a very important and valid one. But the different explorations of the archetype have resulted in a library of different archetype 'sets' from which we can choose how to parcel out our being in the most clarifying way. Doing so makes the idea of the archetype just as varied as other branches in philosophy. 

When is to be made of this? Are we the Fool, the Poet, the Hero? Are we more elemental, as Anger, Fear, Sorrow, Happiness, Disgust, Surprise? Are we the Trickster, the Maiden, the Child? Mother Nature, the Shaman, Night, Day? In essence we are all of these things and the myriad of other archetypes that have been determined to be the 'fundamental' archetypes. But what use does admitting we have these archetypes within us have, since if we continue to expand and agree that we can relate to every archetype handed to us, up through Spirit, we will come to the recognition that we are a little bit of everything? 

People want to recognize their archetypes within themselves so they can call out recognition when one emerges. Then, analysis of the balance of their archetypes can lead to transformation and a healthier existence that transitions smoothly from archetype to archetype. 

As a student of archetypal studies, I'm simply feeling a little overwhelmed by the excess of possibilities. But it's just like my previous post about sickness - with literature and the internet, we have infinite possibilities of what could be the 'true' answer. And I simply find myself overwhelmed, frequently, by the abundance of possibilities for how we can come to self-understanding and transformation. As someone who already has trouble making decisions, infinite possibilities makes it just a little more challenging. 

But hey, that's the fun of it too. 

www.adhk.org

To Laugh

I want to say a little more about humor. A lot of humor these days is heavily dependent on shock value. It doesn't have to be something particularly amusing that’s being said, but the bold and shocking content has you giggling, in a haze of disbelief about what you just experienced. That’s the stuff I like. Why is it so amusing? Well, part of it for me has to do with my logical mind - it loves when something irrational or of a distorted context is intentionally placed for humor’s sake. And the shocking stuff is hilarious because it tests the boundaries of our fabricated 'safe' zones. 

The last few generations are a lot more desensitized than previous ones, which is why it’s not likely that you and your grandmother are going to be giggling over South Park. Raising the bar seems to be happening exponentially in terms of raunchy, disgusting and offensive jokes. So what will this humor evolve into? It’s a tremulous line. Going from funny, to hilarious and slightly offensive, to offensive and sort of funny, to downright offensive and negative, to making you cringe with discomfort because of it's lack of integrity as a 'joke' - we at least still draw a completely tasteless line somewhere. 

There are some tried and true comedic methods that still always work, for me - like dry, British humor. There’s something about it that never gets too inappropriate (a matter of opinion, of course) and knows the perfect combination of human interaction, awkwardness, and word play. But then again, that’s my taste and I know some people can’t handle it. It can be corny.

But you know, I’m realizing something that I have kept hidden for awhile (though maybe more from myself than others since I'm sure there are people who have picked up on it long ago) - I’m really corny. There, I’ve said it. I have corny, ridiculous humor that isn’t always funny. Sometimes I just say words because the word combination sounds funny to me, not the content. Am I the only one that does this? I wonder if it’s because I’m a writer so words that sound funny together are just one of those kicks that I'll get, and everyone else looks cross-eyed at me and thinks I have some mental instability. But it’s true. Banana poodoo, for instance. I might sound like a child, it might make no sense, and it may hold no context. But doesn’t your mind giggle JUST A LITTLE when those syllables roll off the tongue? 

Ah, well. To each their own humor. I equally appreciate good random humor as well as clever, witty humor - it's all about the delivery. And either way - we’ll always figure out a way to laugh. Whether or not it corresponds with an accepted moral compass, we can’t help but laugh. It's part of the necessary balance of being human.