Wake Up For A Minute: 6 Questions to Ponder

I've noticed in myself and talking to other people, that it's very easy for this weird lockdown situation to leave us just kind of ploughing through our days, getting on with things or entertaining ourselves, without much sense of purpose or meaning. A friend said last night he wanted to kind of 'wake up' to why he was doing what he was doing, to the important things of his life, and I guess we all want to do that a little bit. So I thought it might be really valuable to slow down for a few minutes, and just ask ourselves some genuine questions. Here are the top six questions I could think of to get started with.


What is the job of pain in the body? What good can suffering do? Is there any?





What have you learnt about yourself in this crisis? What that’s encouraged or surprised you? What that’s worried or disappointed you?





What does it show us that as a society we responded to this both by being generous and looking out for others, and by stock piling, panic buying, and breaking the restrictions to enjoy the sun? 





If you didn’t do those unhelpful things (much), does that mean you’re a fundamentally better person than those who did? (And if you did, does that mean you’re a fundamentally worse person than those who didn’t?)





“All of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Blaise Pascal, Pensees. 
What has it been like to be without many of the normal distractions from yourself these last couple of weeks? Or have you just found different distractions?





Why, until this crisis and even during it, do we in the 21st Century west talk about death so much less than other cultures and civilisations?