Questions are Fun!

This is an email that I wrote/sent in 2005 to some friends and family:

I LOVE surveys! Probably because I LOVE asking questions (and being asked them, or answering them even if I'm not asked). This article has many good questions.

However, I don't know that I've ever met anyone who likes questions quite as much as I do, and more than a few people seem to find questions, specifically MY questions, downright annoying! I thought this article had a good description of those people (though most people give less thoughtful replies - something more along the lines of a groan, not even an answer):

Walters recalls the time she asked Prince Philip of Great Britain if, in the event England elected a president, he would have enjoyed being a politician. Philip replied, without warmth, that this was a hypothetical question, which he normally didn't answer.

"I was crushed," says Walters, "but I learned a valuable lesson about talking to people in very high places: avoid the hypothetical question, of the sort that usually begins 'What if . . .' and then departs into some fanciful situation that never happened and never will. That type of question can be asked of creative people, for whom imaginary situations are intriguing, but practical, crisp people dismiss it as a waste of time."

Well, I guess I am an imaginative, creative person. However, I have often given a similar answer to the question (one of those discussed in the article) of: Would you change anything if you could live your life over again? I usually say that since I never will live my life over again, I don't see the point of searching for regrets. Furthermore, my past has shaped who I am, and if I changed my past I might become a different person who would make a different decision about changing my past, and the process would become an endless loop. Still, at least that's an answer. Saying "That's a stupid question" is not an answer - even if it is a stupid question. I guess it's because I REALLY like questions. So, although it may be a stupid question, I've always got a back-up question to any answer on the tip of my tongue: Why?

Maybe that's why I also liked the description of the other guy, who gave a REAL answer to that "stupid" question:

When the subject is inventive and in the mood, however, hypothetical questions are fecund. Kenneth Tynan asked Richard Burton, "If you had your life to live, over again, would you change anything?" - a question that is as worn out as vaudeville. But Burton's reply was fresh and revealing, "I'd like to be born the son of a duke with 90,000 pounds a year, on an enormous estate.... And I'd like to have the most enormous library, and I'd like to think that I could read those books forever and forever, and die unlamented, unknown, unsung, unhonored - and packed with information."