The most central questions for me are:

1. a) “Who am I?” –and associated with this:

“Why am I the way I am?” And: “How do I wish I was?” And: “Where do my own ideas of how I am and how I would like to be diverge?” And: “What possible motives make me want to be different than I am?” And: “What opportunities do I have to change according to my ideas within the framework of my personal and social conditions?”

1. b) “What is the world?”, “How does the world work?”, “How do I relate to this world?”

1. c) “Which things are worth living for and why for these in particular?” And: “How do I get to these things that are worth living for?” So: “How can I live a meaningful life” : “How do I define what is generally referred to as “happiness”?”and consequently: “How do I become happy?” or: “What prevents me from taking or being able to take my happiness?”.

Self-assurance, self-positioning and thus self-determination cannot be achieved with positivistic acceptance of the so-called “world as it is”. The leitmotivic orientation towards the “feasible within the rules of the game”, which one finds without having determined them oneself, i.e. identifying with them ad hoc (why actually?) and thus becoming the representing, supporting and ultimately also executing organ of this predetermined reality, the status quo.

Only “questioning”, i.e. the “questioning” of predetermined realities, can create a fundamental mental, temporal and spatial distance that makes it possible for me to recognize and realize myself as an individual, i.e. as a feeling, thinking and acting subject. A lack of distance leads to dependency and is therefore fundamentally at odds with a self-determining, autonomous approach to life, which is generally referred to as “personal freedom”.

“Asking questions” is actually quite easy. And with children, we see that it is one of the fundamental things of becoming human: “Why is this flower red?”, “Why is that man over there sad?”, “Why can’t I play for another hour?”