So, I hit upon an interesting thought tonight that I feel like expounding. It occurs to me that this would be a particularly interesting conversation to have with my ex boyfriend, actually. But it comes down to the whole "question everything" philosophy.

People at times find me a real pain in the ass to try to teach something to. I come across as stubborn, willful, think I know it all, or something like that - even people who should know me well enough to understand me feel this way. It drives my sisters crazy. They are constantly talking about how I never want advice.

Example one: For some reason, one day, my uncle and I were messing around with some electronic equipment, and I wanted to plug the VCR or whatever into the wall, and he said "You can't do that." and I said "why not?" and he said "just trust me, you can't." and I said "why not?" and he said "okay fine if you don't believe me, try it yourself." and I said "I didn't say I didn't believe you, I just wanted to know why not?" and he said "because it's a three prong plug and a two prong hole." and I said "Okay." (I couldn't see the plug when I was asking this.)

Example two: Rob was trying to teach me how to do some simple maintenance thing on my car, I don't remember what. But I was questingin him as he showed me the steps, and he got really irritated with me. Afterward I said "But I just want to understand what you're doing" and he said something to the effect of that was fine but it was rude to ask all those questions when I had asked somebody for help, because it made it seem like after I asked them for help I was questioning their competence. So in his opinion I should wait to ask questions until after he was done.

Well that method of waiting to the end to ask has it's limitations. I believe part of Rob's point was that sometimes the answers become evident later in the process, and so one should wait to the end to see what one doesn't understand. I get that, but it doesn't work very well with the way my mind operates. If I don't understand a step in the process I won't remember that step.

And so this got me thinking that I guess this is just my general approach to life: question everything. It's not meant to be offensive to anyone . . . in my world view, if you're right, then you'll be able to put me in my place pretty quickly if I question you, and I'm the type of person who can usually admit it when someone else is right, so what's the big deal? But why should I take anything as gospel truth w/o at least thinking about it a bit?

But here's the key . . . it seems like a lot of people who wander around going "Question everything" usually end up believing that there aren't answers at all. I say "question everything", but I also believe there are answers.