The bravery of Asking Why

It takes courage to ask why, to stand in front of authority and question them, make them answer with logic and reason. To force them to answer without going back to the default status quo, answer because. I am a true believer that there are no stupid questions. That we ask questions for a reason, to understand, to obtain knowledge.

Sure, some people might roll their eyes at someone who asks the question why. But that is only because they might already know the answer. The person asking doesn't or even want to dive deeper into the answer to get more insights. I always remember people getting frustrated when people asked questions at the end of lectures at university. They weren't frustrated at the person or the question, but the idea of wasting their own personal time. But they were not brave enough to stand up and leave the lecture theater; their cowardice only let them mutter their frustrations under their breath.

I was in the special needs class, the learning-impaired class. Or what the kids called it, the dumb class. This was a class of slow learners or kids with ADHD or dyslexia. I was the child with dyslexia. Everyone used to call us stupid. Say you can't. That would be too hard for you. The judgments started before the question was even asked. But my father taught me something when I was little: to question everything.

"Do not be afraid of making mistakes. Be afraid only of not learning from your mistakes. An expert is someone who has acquired skills and knowledge by making a lot of mistakes." ^1

Everything we know and understand is because people made it up. Everything in sociality is a pretense, a social construct, an idea, a promise. The only reason it works is that we conform and trust the promises made in our societies. The only thing we don't make up is science, excluding the language we use to describe it.

There is a saying: if you burned all the knowledge and books of the world, the only ones that would come back exactly the same would be the books of science. And science is about asking questions and challenging those questions. Having hypotheses (theories) and testing those theories to see if they are true. And if they are, then getting an independent test of the theory and seeing if they come up with the same answer; if not, then the hypothesis is wrong.

Questions are not stupid; questions are the reason I could leave the special needs class and flourish in this world. I might not be liked by everyone because I challenge everything I learn. But because of this, only the strong, the egoless have stayed next to me. The weak and unwilling to question their existence have left. And that is OK.

It's OK to not like being challenged. I personally love it because it forces me to question my reasoning and learn if it is the correct way moving forward or if I am wrong. Learning you are wrong is a wonderful thing because it gives you the opportunity to correct yourself and change for the better.

Knowledge is power, and asking questions is the bravery needed to obtain that power.

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^1: Love for imperfect things by Haemin Sunim