title: The Joy of Bad Questions - A Modern Koan
type: talk
category: outline
date: 2025-12-16
tags: [clipboard, draft]
status: draft
source: clipboard

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The Joy of Bad Questions: A Modern Koan

Every so often, my work hands me a koan. Not the kind whispered in a monastery, but the kind delivered in an email with a spreadsheet attached. I’ve been a data analyst for a long time, and after decades of requests, I’ve learned that the strangest questions often carry the most unintended lessons.

Sometimes the data requests I receive sound like this gem: “If a car is moving at 50 mph for five hours, what color are the driver’s eyes?”

On the surface, it looks like a math problem. But the punchline is that it isn’t. It’s a question that cannot be answered by the data at hand. And yet, someone asked it, expecting clarity. But to provide clarity, first I must have clarity. I have to sit with the koan. Not rush to an answer, not scramble for a workaround, but pause long enough to see what’s really being asked — or whether anything coherent is being asked at all.

Another time, I received a request to rerun a report with a different sorting. I had already sent the data in an Excel table. Instead of clicking the sort button themselves, they sent it back as if it required a new analysis. I told them I’d get right on it. Then I clicked “sort,” saved the file, went out for coffee, and sent it back after my break. The request was absurd, but it gave me a laugh — and a free coffee break. And here too, the practice was in the pause: seeing the illusion of complexity, smiling at it, and letting it be simple.

Of course, not all requests are funny. Some are a bit more draining than amusing. They come wrapped in extra words, mismatched logic, or expectations that don’t quite line up with reality. And yet, even here, practice shows up. I have to pause, strip away the excess, and return to the heart of the question.

And maybe this is the invitation for all of us. To set an intention, just once or twice a week, to spend a few minutes contemplating the absurdity, the beauty, and the opportunity of what passes across our desks. Not to fix it, not to solve it, but to notice it. To see how even the strangest requests can become mirrors, showing us where clarity is needed, and where humor can soften the edges.

So I sit at my desk, amused and drained, sorting data and sorting questions. And I smile, because the absurdity is the teaching. Work and practice aren’t separate — they’re both invitations to notice when the mind insists on answers, and to laugh gently when the question itself is the lesson.

_Anger fast rises,
a laugh smooths the rippled pond,
ravens watch asmile.