This past weekend I journeyed to L.A. via Southwest and got to peruse the airline’s Spirit magazine (something I used to do several days a week while in the corporate sector).  I came across an article by journalist Warren Berger, “What if you found that creative genius does not lie in knowing all the answers? Chasing Beautiful Questions.”

My initial intent as I began reading was simply to add to my collection of favorite words and phrases. Most of the books I devour are filled with my scribbles. My office features a wall with a patchwork of Post-it notes featuring beautiful thoughts I've gathered from others to which I turn when inspiration is needed. However, as I progressed through the article, my thinking kept circling back to Almond.

Berger defines a beautiful question as “one that leads to invention and profound change.”  He then shares how Van Phillips has used the “indomitable spirit of inquiry” to transform the design of prosthetics (creator of the Cheetah blade) and ultimately details how questions can progress from “Why?” to “What if?” to then finally the powerful, “How might?” 

One particular generalization prompted a great deal of reflection, "schools tend to discourage them [questions] and students get graded more for their answers than for their questions."  Those of us who have (or have worked with) children have been faced with the million and one questions.  I recall reminding myself as a parent, “Don’t squash the question.”  I would either try to answer it, which often kept leading to more questions, or when I was out of answers, would then say, “Why do you think that is?”

Let’s pause together, parents and staff, and recommit ourselves to fostering curiosity in our children.   When we pose questions and support others in doing so, we encourage divergent thinking by “stepping back from habits, assumptions and familiar thoughts.”  To ask a question, we must first make an observation of the world around us and then be “unafraid to ask naïve or fundamental questions.”  Asking is only the first step though, we must be “willing to stay with the questions as you [we] endeavor to understand and act on them.”

There are 3 new sticky notes on my wall:  “When you find your beautiful question, be prepared to own it and to live with it,”  “Follow it [my question] into unfamiliar places, grapple with it, and change it over time,”  “Answers have a way of becoming insufficient or obsolete over time.  Only the question endures.”

I look forward to pondering beautiful questions and to hearing the beautiful questions that beckon you!