The post Super purple moon appeared first on Live Hoppy.
]]>It’s a super moon because the moon is as close to the earth as it ever is. It’s a blood moon because it’s a lunar eclipse that gives the moon a red tint. It’s a blue moon because it’s the second full moon in the month. A red blue moon seems like it should be a purple moon to me.
What I opened my laptop to write about this morning wasn’t what they call this thing. It was about the sense of wonder I felt this morning.
I set the alarm for 5:30 which is a bit earlier than normal for me these days. I started the coffee and then went outside. There was still just a sliver of the moon at full brightness and the rest was already in the shadow of the earth.
Perfect timing because I wasn’t really interested in standing out in the cold for too long to watch the entire slow show of the earth’s shadow creeping over the moon. I was up just in time for those last few exciting minutes.
It was a cool thing to see: the moon hanging there in the sky, still visible, but not glowing like normal. It looked like space. Like outer space. Like a giant ball of reddish rock just floating around out there.
I was filled with a sense of awe and appreciation that went far beyond just the coolness of watching this super purple moon. I felt this reminder of just how weird and cool and amazing the world is and how vast the universe beyond our world is. I had that deep sense that life is just so precious.
It’s the sort of feeling that I would love to be able to just hold on to. It seems strange that it’s even possible to forget for a second how special life is, much less for days or weeks or months as happens all to often to most of us. I do forget. I get caught up in the everyday of life and I forget the extraordinary of the every day.
It seems almost as though this sense of wonder is something that one should try to cultivate. I think part of what is so powerful about it is that it’s not something that one can really cultivate or predict. It just strikes at certain times. It’s a precious feeling. The fact that we’re all here and alive is really fucking cool.
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]]>The post Question The Questions appeared first on Live Hoppy.
]]>The questions we ask can be more important than the answers.
Who’s to say you want Pepsi or Coke at all? Why should the choice be limited to fizzy sugar water? Certainly nobody I talk to wants Trump or Clinton as president. And while Walmart may be a bit cheaper, Target is always a better experience, but the question is still limiting.
Some questions can really open up the world for us.
The next time in my life that I really started to learn about the power of questions was as a math tutor. As I started to become a skilled tutor, I realized that I could walk somebody through a problem with never giving them an answer but merely leading them through a series of questions. On some level, everybody knew the answers if they could only be guided to find them.
Appreciate Inquiry
Recently, I have again encountered a reminder about the importance of questions in the form of Appreciative Inquiry. AI was formulated by David Cooperrider and was originally intended to apply to groups (businesses, etc.) but is just as applicable on a personal level. It’s based on the idea of asking different questions. Rather than asking, “How do we solve this problem?” it’s about asking, “What is good about what we’re doing now?”, “What do we dream of for the future and how do we get there?”.
Find questions that make you excited
Finding the right question to ask can open up a whole world of opportunities. For example, asking myself “How can I make more money?” really doesn’t inspire me or make me come up with ways to make money. When I ask, “How can I add more value to my boss, our company and our clients?” I am much more inspired. I could come up with pages of ideas on how to do that and feel excited in the process. Feeling the creativity and excitement that comes when I find the right questions to ask myself reminds me of just how important questions are.
There are places where I’ve felt kind of stuck in my life lately, or maybe better put, places where I sense I am ready to grow and to change, but I’m just not quite sure what that is going to look like yet. I feel like I want to be doing things that I am more passionate about, but I’m not sure what it is that I want to be doing. I want to be making more of a difference, but I’m not sure what area I want to be making a difference in. I’m frustrated because I don’t have the answers right now. Writing this makes me think that what I need to do is to re-examine my questions. Maybe the right question would lead me to better answers.
I would love to have this figured out, to have the end of this story, to have some great life-changing question to end this post with. The truth of it that I’m thinking all of this through as I write, and I don’t know what the question I’m looking for is right now. Maybe some day I’ll have an update to this post that has it.
I feel like I should have answers to questions like, “What do I really want to do with my life?” and “What am I REALLY passionate about?” And while I could give some answers to these questions, I’m not totally sure about them. I’m still trying to figure out where I am going with life.
Maybe questions like “Who do I want to be?” or “What sort of person do I want to be?” or “What traits do I want to develop?” would be more useful that “What do I want to do?” After all, there is NOTHING that prevents me from being the person that I want to be on a daily basis where as there are hurdles for doing what I want to do, like the reality check of needing to make enough money to support myself.
Maybe I could ask questions like, “What would I like to explore more?” or “How could I experiment more with different things to maybe help me figure out what I want to do?” or “How can I work on overcoming fears I may have that hold me back from being more willing to go out of my comfort zone and pursue my dreams rather than playing it safe?”
Or maybe I could start with “What questions would open up life for me and inspire me to come up with answers that make me feel excited and hopeful?” Yes, I think I like that question.
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