Many of life's most basic questions are best answered by more questions. What is happiness? Is it different from joy? What does it mean to be alive? What are you doing to prove you are not dead? Is right ever wrong? What is right?
In questions of behavior there are often dilemmas that create ethical uncertainties or moral ambiguities. Can one care too much? When does help hurt? Master teachers throughout the ages ask questions of their followers that people are still trying to answer millennia later. Questions spoken by individuals help address daily challenges. Is there a better way? How may I serve others? Furthermore, groups of good people come together to collectively formulate questions that can be employed in times of uncertainty or in everyday activity to ensure decent outcomes.
The Rotarians have a set of questions that could be used by everyone, even without attending the luncheon meetings. "Is it the truth?" "Is it fair to all concerned?" "Will it build good will and better friendships?" "Will it be beneficial to all concerned?" This four-way test is the heart of a worldwide organization with over a million members devoted to service.
There are other questions asked by people of faith that can be guiding stars for those in the night of doubt. Some Christians have a question that they ask for personal guidance, "WWJD?" or "What would Jesus do?" Others may ask, am I fulfilling the pillars of my faith or am I worthy of my forefathers or at one with my God?
To this list of questions I propose another one. It is IIAAM, or "Is It All About Me?"
It is a test of our security. It is a measuring stick of the need that we sometimes have to force the center of the universe to shift to ourselves. If everything is about us we fail the test. Since insecurity is the seed-bed for pride then it is also a fair tool to calculate arrogance. Insecurity is also the birthplace of comparative worth. If I AM better than you, I'm righteous. If I AM more educated than you, I AM smart, and if I AM richer than you, I prosper; less than you I AM a pauper. So the frequency of I AM can be monitored to know how deep the hole of personal deficiency is.
Each of these assessments and all the others that grow from low esteem demand the focus be on me. So if IIAAM is asked and answered frequently in the affirmative, we are well on our way to self-centered conceit in spite of feelings of loneliness, inadequacy, emotional poverty, and low social position. If everything is about me, the biochemical machinery uses neuronal networks for solo survival. If, when we are stressed, we only can imagine us doing the task without seeking help or having to do it our way only, or we keep saying I AM sorry for everything, then we flunk the IIAAM exam. If we were reared to intuit that we are alone in the world because our parents' mental model was emotional avoidance, we compensate by abbreviating our vocabulary to me, mine, my and I. We all have heard people speak so eloquently of themselves that the listener starts to count the number of I AM statements. These speakers, by not first asking the "IIAAM?" question, announce to the world they are insecure in spite of whatever their station is in life. Being rich or poor by itself does not determine how an individual will respond. It is the inner person that answers.
In the simplest of interchanges in families, with strangers, business associates, or in more complex political and even worldwide negotiations, the same subject could be framed with: "Is it the truth?" "Is it fair to all concerned?" "Will it build good will and better friendships?" "Will it be beneficial to all concerned?" Or it could be framed another way: "Is It All About Me?"
Joseph Cramer, M.D., is a fellow of the American Academy of Pediatrics, practicing pediatrician for more than 25 years and an adjunct professor of pediatrics at the University of Utah. He can be reached at jgcramermd@yahoo.com.