What use is knowing all the answers if I’m asking the wrong questions? Sometimes the best strategy, instead of microscopically examining and reexamining a conundrum, is to step back and take a wider view.

If it is a contentious issue I listen especially closely to those whose opinions seem diametrically opposed to mine because it is all too easy to be negative. Next, I look for what question that offence evokes? Finally, by phrasing the question using only “I” and eliminating every instance of “you”, I can ask the question of myself, whose behaviour is the only one I have any control over.

So, here is the question that arises in me as a consequence of the current global pandemic:

On discovering that something I have always done could cause harm to someone else, will I willing and cheerfully change my own behaviour even if it causes me great inconvenience?

Courtney Jester 2021