Questions as Offerings

Part of Terms & Conditions, an evolving body of work exploring how we renegotiate the inherited definitions that shape how we work, create, belong, and become.

As someone who asks questions professionally, I have grown curious about the nature of our relationship to answers. It is a privilege to sit with people in inquiry, to create space where questions can breathe. Over time, I began wondering whether questions are not simply tools for finding answers, but something more generative.

I have kept journals for as long as I can remember. My pages are filled with questions posed to myself, to mentors, to the universe. For years, I treated questions as a means to relief. If I asked well enough, perhaps I would land on clarity.

But at some point, my attention shifted from chasing answers to studying the questions themselves. What if a question is not a problem to solve, but an offering? A guidepost? A practice?

Clayton Christensen shared:

“questions are places in your mind where answers fit. If you haven’t asked the question, the answer has nowhere to go. It hits your mind and bounces right off. You have to ask the question — you have to want to know — in order to open up the space for the answer to fit.”

And then there is Rainer Maria Rilke, who urges us to:

“Have patience with everything unresolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves as if they were locked rooms or books written in a very foreign language. Don't search for the answers, which could not be given to you now, because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps then, someday far in the future, you will gradually, without even noticing it, live your way into the answer.”

Together they remind me that questions are not deficiencies. They are orientations.

When I treat a question as sacred, something placed gently at the altar of my life rather than something to conquer, I notice how my posture changes. Curiosity replaces urgency. Exploration replaces performance.

Zen Buddhism takes a similar approach through koans, paradoxical riddles or questions meant to challenge rational thinking and deepen spiritual awareness. They are not meant to be solved in a conventional way. They are meant to unsettle certainty, to loosen binary thinking, to expand our capacity to sit with ambiguity.

If questions are practices rather than problems, how might we experiment with them?

A few experiments with asking:

Some questions zoom us in.
Some help us lift our head and widen the horizon.

Try shifting perspective.
Ask the same question in a different language.
Ask it monthly and notice how it evolves.
Ask it before you fall asleep. Ask it upon waking.
Draw it out.
Ask it playfully. Ask it with humility. Ask it like a mystic.

And use discernment when asking others.
Who is the right person to ask this question?
How does it feel to sit with it on your own first?

Questions have led me into entire ecosystems of thought and relationship.

When I asked, How can I design my business beyond a neoliberal foundation that feels true to me? it sent me into the work of Lynne Twist, Tara McMullin, adrienne maree brown, Dr. Jennifer Mullan, and into conversations about extractive systems and social context.

When I asked, Why does dread arise when I think about editing? it led me into creative process courses and into rooms with artists who see revision as play.

When I asked, What am I missing by living up to societal standards of what it means to be a therapist today? it opened conversations about legal structures, power, and possibility.

Each question became less a problem and more a companion.

I once heard Stephen Madigan describe questions as his paintbrush, his companion, and his political ally. That image stayed with me. Questions can shape the canvas of our lives. They can challenge dominant narratives. They can carve new pathways.

This way of relating to inquiry grants me permission to remain in motion. I do not need immediate relief from an answer. I can stay with the question.

If you are carrying a question that feels heavy or unresolved, I wonder what might happen if you treated it as an offering instead of a burden. What might shift if the goal was not to solve it, but to live it?

Stay curious,

Molly