What does it mean to not take your work back home with you? Especially when your work needs you to manage a hell lot of unhealthy behavioural patterns, maybe even the worst unimaginable human behaviour that shows up in society.
You see, it’s really difficult to be a completely different person in your personal life when your job requires a highly attentive, alert, observant, analytical self of yours. It’s really hard to step out of the interrogative skills in casual conversations. The caveat is to stop trying to show up as a completely different person in your not-so-professional interactions. The much-needed question to self here is, “What is at stake in this conversation: the relationship, the moments of light-hearted conversations, someone’s life and safety, your image, your conscience?”
In casual, informal conversations, the “no question is a stupid question” has one exception. That is, one exception that I can think of. The only situation when you should not ask a question is when your sole reason to ask that question is to test the other person, and somehow flaunt your arrogance by feigning ignorance.
This is especially true when you are trained to ask questions to which you already have the answers in order to note a baseline for the other person’s responses and thus move the investigation forward. The thing is, not every conversation is an interrogation. And sometimes, even when we can call out a bluff, maybe it’s not the right place or right time, or the right way, to do so. Most importantly, maybe it is not for us to call out the other person in that moment.
All this round-about way of saying that we can choose curiosity over the surety of knowing what we think are the only true facts of the situation, i.e. we can choose curiosity over arrogance. As Rich Diviney puts it, “The quality of our lives are directly proportional to the quality of our questions“. He mentions this in the context of questioning ourselves. But, the same can be applied to questioning others too. The question to self before voicing a question to the other remains, “What is the better question here, and Why so?“
P.S.: This is especially great advice for classroom settings too. Just saying.