What does an unruly Quaker do? Lots of things, including persistently asking interesting questions.
But what exactly makes a question interesting? To answer that, journey with me, will you? Hop in for a quick trip back in time…
… WHEN: December 2000
WHERE: graduate school
WHO: me in a big lecture hall of students, including my besties S and N.
WHAT: a lecture by Professor Carol Gilligan — oops, that’s a NAME DROP for some of you. If it’s not ringing a bell, she was a big deal in the 90s and wrote books about relational psychology, including In A Different Voice and Between Voice and Silence: Women and Girls, Race and Relationship.
(The only other name I can drop is Natalie Portman, Lady Thor herself…
»one Ms. Natalie Portman«
… who was an undergraduate when I was in grad school. I saw her twice for like two seconds, so if you came here for hot celebrity goss, sorry, all sales are final).
So I’m sitting in the lecture hall with my very-year-2000 pixie hairdo…
»the questionable hairdo in question«
… next to besties S and N. Our coats and scarves are piled on a nearby seat. Icy street slush melts under our boots. We’re writing in each other’s notebooks about the lecture and ideas for final papers. Professor Gilligan is talking about final projects. She says, “I ask you to start here: ask an interesting question.”
Wait. What? I perk up.
“An interesting question,” she says, poking the air to make her point, “is a question you don’t (poke) know (poke) the (poke) answer (poke) to (poke).”
Well hot dang. Had it occurred to me to write a paper based on a question I did NOT know the answer to? No. It had not.
What had occurred to me was to write a paper that would get an A. Sure, in college I’d figured out how to get an A and choose an interesting topic. But wasn’t the whole point of a paper to … uh … prove your thesis?
I don’t remember Professor Gilligan saying it, but I’ll add, and I’ll even poke the air for emphasis: an interesting question is a question (poke) you (poke) care (poke) about.
It’s not interesting if you don’t give a flying Fig Newton.
… So: an interesting question is a question -
(1) you CARE about
and
(2) you DON’T KNOW THE ANSWER/S to.
Can you dig it?
You can dig it.
“Notes From an Unruly Quaker” is my hub for asking questions I care about and I don’t know the answers to.
What are my interesting question/s?
They are the questions that nag me VERY RUDELY at all hours of the day and night. And they go a little something like:
How do I be a genuinely good person in this world, right here and right now?
What, if anything, does being a good person have to do with what happens after this lifetime, when I shed this mortal coil?
How do being good and doing good relate? Can you have one without the other?
What does goodness even mean? Goodness!
What’s love got to do, got to do with it?
How do I do good in a world that feels like it is literally on fire, or flooding, or both — while also not burning myself out, while also dealing with mental health challenges, neurodivergence and migraines, while also being a good mom, partner, friend, daughter?
How do I raise my white, cis-gender, middle-class son to not be an asshole?
What do my culture and ancestry have to do with any of this? (Spoiler alarm: probably a lot.)
Is mascara worth the hassle? Does it really make that much of a difference?
How do I do good while being a bisexual white cis-gender middle-class Quaker woman in an economic and political system based on worker exploitation, racism, white supremacy, and myriad other social oppressions?
How much wealth is it ethical to have? Especially when other people have so little? Is it true that, as Dorothy Day said, “If you have two coats you have stolen one from the poor”?
Can I even count myself as good if I’m driving around in a car contributing to climate change and you know, buying unnecessary stuff? From Amazon, no less?
Ok, that is actually a big bundle of questions. And I couldn’t care more, because the stakes couldn’t be higher.
The ‘so what?’ of “Notes From an Unruly Quaker,” and the eventual book it will become, is literally the meaning of life and what it means to live a good life.
I care about this. For a lot of reasons. Partly because of how I was raised. Partly because I had COVID in December 2022, pre-vaccine, and spent ten days in isolation, and in the wee hours, at 2:00 AM, checking my O2 meter thingy…
…I wrote farewell notes to my family in case I died —FOR REAL I REALLY DID— and I knew this:
If I died that night, my regrets wouldn’t be my usual worries like, “Did I talk too much at lunch with L?” or “Should I really have had that third drink at A & B’s house?” Nah.
My regrets would be the things I had not done. Specifically:
Seeing my son grow up. There wasn’t much I could do about that.
Doing as much good in the world I can, which is pretty abstract and for heaven’s sake I’m working on it.
Being in a movie or TV show, but that horse galloped away a long time ago (unless you can tell me how to be an extra or bit part, please oh please).
Writing more. Writing. More. Getting paid for it. While tackling The Big Questions.
And that last item, friends, is well within my purview.
Quoth Dr. Elizabeth Kubler-Ross:
“Since unfinished business is the biggest problem in life, it’s also the primary issue we address as we face death. Most of us pass on with a great deal of unfinished business; many of us have at least some. There are so many lessons to learn in life, it’s impossible to master them all in one lifetime. But the more lessons we learn the more business we finish, and the more fully we live, really live life. And no matter when we die, we can say, ‘God, I have lived!’”
So. Here goes. I’m crossing the undone off my list. I’m asking my interesting questions. Here. Now.
The thing about asking interesting questions in a real way is you have to be honest about not knowing the answers.
Not knowing makes you vulnerable. You can’t be sure of the outcome. You can’t be sure you’re doing the right thing. And you certainly can’t be sure you’ll get an A.
Related: The thing about believing your writing is worth money is you have to believe that your writing is worth money.
In other words, you need to think your work is valuable.
This is super-duper-cahoopter hard for me. I mean it is HARD, friends. This surprises some folks because of those novels under my belt. But truthfully? It is vulnerable-making to the extreme. Writing is weird that way.
Like Hemingway said…
»“There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.”«
… Look, I read a lot. I know that all sorts of smart people have had all sorts of smart things to say about how to live a good life. And that’s where I usually get stuck.
But here’s the thing, when I manage to stuff a sock in The Inner Doubter’s mouth:
I’m not sure I’ve heard from a bisexual Gen X Quaker white woman mother partner sister daughter friend doing anti-racist work, restorative justice facilitation, homicide court companionship, gun-violence victim care, who is age 49.9 and in the freaking throes of menopause, whose dad died from dementia and whose mother lives next door, who builds her own furniture and whose son is 18, who has chickens and a dog she loves way too much, wrote three young adult novels translated into six languages, knows her way around a roller rink, reads two or three books a week, loves history, is an abolitionist, who’s been married 20 years and definitely doesn’t have as much sex as her husband would like, who is the 13th great-granddaughter of Martin Luther, who struggles in recurring and ongoing ways with anxiety, depression, eating disorder, migraines, and just basically who is so goddamn sensitive that it’s like walking around with no skin on.
Not to put too fine a point on it.
I know that’s pretty specific, but to quote John Hodgman:
“Specificity is the soul of narrative.”
A good editor knows that the more a writer digs down into the specifics of her story, the more relatable her story is. Songs are like that, too. I don’t know why it works that way. It just does.
Anyway. I’m going to investigate my interesting questions right here at the beginning of every week.
And every Thursday, I’ll send out recommendations of things I’m loving (or anti-recommendations of things I’m hating) - TV, movies, books, food, etc. Yay!
And I have heaps of other fun stuff planned.
Including, maybe, an epic adventure starring an echidna named Flip Flop Paddletoots…
»this is an echidna, my favorite animal«
… and I’d love for you to come along for the ride.
A few posts will be free, but I hope you’ll become a paid subscriber. Follow the subscribe button to do so. $8 a month (or more!) will give you access to everything, including every post and full archives. Founding members will receive even more goodies.
Your paid subscription will allow me to … get paid for writing.
AND it will allow me to maintain the flexible schedule needed to keep doing my social justice work.
This work includes sitting with families in homicide trials and other court proceedings. Facilitating restorative justice circles. Supporting victims of gun violence in Durham. Planning more ways to implement restorative justice practices. Working together towards beloved community. And more. All of which I will definitely be writing about.
Who knows, maybe we’ll figure some stuff out together.
Maybe we’ll leave with more questions than answers.
Maybe I’ll fail spectacularly and we’ll all get silly and dance around with lampshades on our heads…
»I beg of you to watch this video«
… That would be fun, too.
At least I won’t regret NOT doing it. (The dancing. And the writing.)
Thanks in advance, friends. For everything.
Xoxo