It's your birthright

In my last post I wrote about how we size people up by asking the wrong set of questions. I suggested a few questions that I think would be better ways of truly understanding people you meet. Examples: 1) What is your life's ambition? 2) What makes your heart sing?

You can see Tom's comment on Plaxo here.

Jeremy commented and made a very good but sad point. You can read his full comment at the bottom of my post but here's the critical part: "you are right, but my hunch is that few would know how to respond to your questions".

Jeremy is right. Few people would know how to answer these questions.

But that is the problem. We have been told for too long that we are nothing but our skin color, our genitalia, the shape of our eyes, our country of origin... that we have forgotten our own souls. It's not that we don't have them. We do. They lie beneath the surface and periodically remind us that they have something to offer. But we have learned to ignore them.

Well it's time to reclaim our birthright. It's time to acknowledge that in addition to the DNA that defines certain parameters for us, in addition to the nurture that has helped craft what we are, we have a soul. And if we let it, that soul can propel us to great heights and help us develop excellence in us and in that corner of the world that we can touch.

Perhaps by asking the questions I have proposed (or anything in that vein), we can help people get used to the fact that there is something more to them. Something much more valuable.