A Life Without Questions

Remember when you were a kid and your favorite thing to ask was why? As we get older, we stop asking that question. In return for our ignorance, we do things that make us less productive and waste energy.

This is a story about living a life without asking questions, called Great Grandma's Ham

One day, mom was preparing a ham for dinner. Mom cut off the ends of the ham and little Suzie asked, "mom, why do you cut off the ends of the ham? "Well," she answered. "This is how your grandma does it."  Suzie wasn't happy with that answer.

"But why don't we eat the ends?" Suzie persisted. "We just don't," her mother returned. So Little Suzie went to her grandma and asked her why the ends are not eaten. She got the same answer: "Well, we just don't."

Just then, Great grandma walks in, and Suzie says "GG, what's wrong with the ends of the ham? Why can't we eat them?"

She looked down at Susie's sweet little face, and said "Sweetheart, there is nothing wrong with the ends. I cut the ends off because I don't have a pot big enough to cook the whole ham."

Ask Questions

When we are young we ask questions. As we get older it seems people lose their patience and no longer want to answer questions so they are rude about it. The learned behavior is that we stop asking questions.

I hate the answer, "Because I said so." As a child, it infuriated me. I now know that I could not know the answer because it was either dangerous or too complicated to understand by a child. I argue the later because kids are smarted than most people give them credit to, and those people are probably too lazy to put a few words together to try and explain something to a child.

In the story about Suzie and her mom, grandmother, and great-grandmother, we can all relate the lesson in our own lives. We are bombarded by information all day long, mostly by people and companies that want to sell us something. The art of advertising is to tell you what you need to hear regardless of the truth in it.

A few years ago Taco Bell had a commercial running in America staring foreign soccer players holding the newest burrito. They joke about how big it was and were ripping Americans for their oversized food portions. The joke was on us, and used against us to sell us something we should not have been eating, though I bet it worked. Americans look at obesity as a badge of honor and it is killing us. Not all of us think this way, but enough of us live our lives without asking why we live them the way we do and are shocked that one day those bad daily decisions lead to our disease and death.

So, ask questions, challenge beliefs. If enough people believe a lie it becomes truth. Sad, right? Buck against the tradition of "Ignorance is bliss." Ignorance is not bliss. Ignorance is poverty. Ignorance is destitution. Ignorance will lead you to your early grave if not pushed out with knowledge.

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