Ok, Now for a Complete 180

So my first two posts were about extravagant questions. How good and great they are. And then I read a comment posted by my uncle, and it got me to thinking.

He said something about how no one wants to ask the "unextravagant question," and how those posts made him think about what extravagant questions he has asked lately. All good stuff, really. But, still, something tickled the back of my mind, like a whispery little voice, saying, "Watch it."

Watch what?

Well, watch my tendency to value extravagance over simplicity, probably. If there's one consistent character trait I've had since I was tiny, it's a taste for the extravagant. I loved to read, so I read 600-page novels in 3rd grade. I loved to cartwheel, so one summer afternoon a friend and I cartwheeled across the entire campus where my dad was going to seminary. In fact, that was the summer when cartwheeling was our de facto mode of transport.

In high school I wanted to double pierce my ears, but mom would have none of it. So I put four earrings in each single-pierced ear.

In 11th grade English class, Mr. Carey constantly chastised my prolific use of the comma. I used it profligately, for emphasis, apparently far too often.

Dessert? Anything with obscene amounts of chocolate.

Espresso drinks? Always grande. Always a flavor.

I live in a world of superlatives. Everything is always The Best! The Most Amazing! The Funniest! The Greatest! But my uncle's post made me reconsider. Yes, there is a virtue in asking the extravagant questions of one's life. It's like a shot of espresso. It rouses us, stirs us to great possibilities.

But there is also virtue in the unextravagant question. In the seemingly simplest, unnecessary, shy question.

I am reminded of my very first class in college. I went to St. John's College, a Great Books school started by Mortimer Adler at the University of Chicago. Classes are intimate, led not by a professor but by a tutor, and always, always begun with a Question.

In this particular class, we were discussing The Iliad. For those unfamiliar with the tome, basically it's about war. And what goes with war? Booty. As in: Plunder. Loot. Stolen goodies.

So there we were, 8 o'clock on a Monday night, all eager, fresh-faced freshman with our big books and our little lives, waiting with pent-up anticipation as the tutor opened his mouth to speak. So my question tonight is.....

The room held its baited breath and all went silent.......

What is booty?

My brow furrowed and a contemptuously quizzical expression crossed my face. What is booty? Are you kidding me? That's the question? Ohmygod. This is going to be a long year. I got stuck with the lame teacher who can't even ask a decent question. What is booty. Please.

At the end of class two hours later, we hadn't even begun to answer it.

And of course, Mr. Rawn was not lame. He was quite brilliant. It was I, in my constant superlative stupor, who was misguided. And for the next four years, I learned the art of asking the very, very simple question. I learned how those questions, the ones I almost cringed in asking, were powerful, mysterious, complex (and they were almost always the ones everyone else was silently wanting to ask anyway). They were like long, deep tunnels into the heart of the thing. They were extravagant on the inside, and you had to dig pretty deep to discover that.

I am just finishing up my life coaching training with an organization called iPEC (Institute for Professional Empowerment Coaching). In this training, we learn to ask powerful questions. They are powerful not because they are extravagant or sexy, but because they are simple. Even obvious.

Well, Coach, I just can't seem to get out of this relationship that I've been in for years. It's really driving me crazy. I want nothing more than to be free and move on, and I just can't seem to do it.

Interesting, the Coach says, quietly. How are you benefiting by staying stuck?

How am I what?........

Extravagant questions are for encouraging us into great possibilities. They are for flinging outward and upward, to see how high they can take us in our search for our greatest potential. And this is good.

But there is another movement that is just as essential. And unextravagant questions are for that. They are for calling us down and in to the heart of something. They are for tunneling from the surface to the core. And the simpler they are, the more unextravagant, the more readily a thing's essence will open itself to us, because essence is by nature shy, hidden, quiet.

So, in challenging towards possibility: atiprazna. In tunneling into essence: the anti-atiprazna.

And I have a feeling that the two are in fact blood relatives. That at the remote edges of the atiprazna lies the unextravagant question, directing the enquirer back down and in. And that in the deepest core of the simplest inquiry lies the extravagant question, opening out and up.