The Art of Questioning I
Part 1 – The Spark
This is Oxford Cogitate’s first in a four-part series about questioning—we look into what questioning can awaken, what it can disturb, and where it can lead us.
Each post begins with a curated quote, and follows the thread.
There are no answers—just a quiet invitation to look again.
“An unexamined life is not worth living.”
— Socrates —
Questioning starts with this one assertion: Examine or Inspect. What? Ourselves, and the lives that we are living.
Questioning is a reminder to stop for a moment, and just ask ourselves: Why am I in this? or What am I doing?
It's like an attempt to interrupt the, perhaps mindless, hum of things. You can also hear something such as: Is this all there is? And suddenly, some sort of unease sets in. Or maybe a sense of calm follows, which can be because questioning may have disrupted a wrong flow that you were in, and might therefore, take you to a better place.
Nonetheless, we were never warned that thinking or questioning could mark us out as annoying or difficult. Or even ungrateful. We and the world we inhabit, prefer smooth edges. A non-questioning/obedient mind ensures it.
Socrates said the unexamined life isn’t worth living. Not because living blindly is a sign of weakness—but because it’s half-alive. Because if you don’t look closer, you’ll never know which parts of you were planted by others, and which parts are truly yours.
This isn’t about being clever. It’s about being awake.
It’s about reclaiming our right to see.
So no—our life doesn’t need to be extraordinary.
But it does need to be ours.
And trying to find and accept what’s really ours can mean losing or giving up our present footing for a while—because that’s probably what real beginnings are supposed to do.
Thank you for reading.