Asking the Right Questions

If we ask the right questions, we can change the world.

It's a slogan, a marketing campaign for some 3D imaging system, something that flashed on the TV as I ran on the treadmill in the hotel fitness center a few months back. Somebody, somewhere, came up with this line in order to sell more, to make money, to promote a product.

And yet the sentiment grabs me.

We can change the world, it claims, and such an idea captures my imagination. For really, under the grind of the day-to-day, beneath the routine and the normal, isn't this what I hope for? Isn't this the unspoken premise of every decision I make, the unacknowledged reason I bother to get out of bed each morning? Don't I hope that somehow, some way, this life that I'm living makes a difference, that the world is a better place for having me in it, that these days and hours and moments are not wasted? Though my reach may be small, though my world may be constrained to the few lives I touch on a regular basis, the perpetual optimism of being human says that somehow this life I live must have meaning.

And now, this: if we ask the right questions, we can change the world. I think I'd take it a step further: if we ask the right questions and then dare to pursue the answers, we can change the world.

Which leaves me with the thought that maybe I need to start asking better questions.