No question is a stupid question

Encouraging his students especially the intimidated ones to ask questions, one of my graduate school professor announces “No question is a stupid question”. He is so wrong. There is always room for you to make mistakes when you are in that protected and comforting world of your overlooking family and close friends. As you grow out of that comfort zone and mature into embracing a society that is so perfect but you are not, you fear whether there is any room for your weaknesses and vulnerabilities. Most people including me do have that fear. And probably you do as well. And what do you fear about? You fear of having not understood or liked a book, you fear of admitting of not having liked a particular sport or a game, you fear of coming across as too old school, you fear that your blogs would be too boring for the readers..you fear of showing yourself as bald.

And what do you do to overcome that fear? Well, you just try to become more perfect - try to become more of something that you are probably not. Sometimes, you succeed and sometimes you become the object of more ridicule and the fear only multiplies. There are actually some other effective ways to deal with your fear as well. One of them is to adopt the "first mover advantage". So, before your vulnerabilities are exposed, you go on the offensive and try to bring out the vulnerabilities or weaknesses of others around you. Quite an effective one, I tell you - it has worked pretty well for me on several instances.

And then you are tired, feel like quitting this never ending game and going back to your protected world where it was so easy to make a mistake. But that protected world doesn't exist anymore. You are on your own. Some questions are indeed stupid - you should definitely know.