Questioning the system in place

Think outside the box.

We all know that phrase. It gets used everywhere, in companies, at school, at conferences, in personal development. But I think it is often misunderstood.

Thinking outside the box is not just about finding an original idea for a PowerPoint presentation. To me, it means something much deeper: accepting that the frame itself can be questioned.

Why do we do things this way? Why do we work like this? Why do we use this currency? Why do we assume that a good life necessarily looks like that? Why does this rule exist? Why does everyone treat this idea as obvious?

And above all: do I really believe it, or have I simply always heard it?

Questioning everything

I think a huge number of things need to be questioned. I would even go further: internally, you have to be able to question everything.

Not necessarily to reject everything. That is very different.

You can listen to your parents, your friends, the people you respect. You can follow the laws, the rules, the advice of people with more experience than you. It would even be fairly stupid to think you can understand everything on your own.

But you can do all of that while keeping a small voice in your head that asks: "Why?"

Because deep down, our understanding of the world remains incredibly limited. We understand some things very well, others far less. We are still discovering how the brain works, how life works, how the universe works, how our own society works. Scientific certainties change, economic models change, technologies appear and make things that were considered impossible completely normal a few years later.

So what I find dangerous is not having convictions. It is forgetting that they can be wrong.

The system becomes one possibility among others

When you start questioning the frame, a lot of things that seemed obvious suddenly become choices.

Working five days a week until retirement? That is one way of organising a life. Keeping all your savings in a bank? That is a possibility. Living your whole life in the country you were born in? A possibility.

Owning a car, buying a house, going to university, having a permanent contract, taking two weeks of holiday in the summer… none of these things is bad. But they are not laws of nature either.

And that is where something changes. What previously looked compulsory simply becomes one option among several.

I think that is also why some people become quite uncomfortable when very established things are questioned. It sometimes forces them to look differently at choices they had considered obvious until then.

The expression "bread and circuses" sometimes comes back to me. If you simply accept what you are offered without ever asking why, it is fairly easy to stay busy for your whole life. Working. Consuming. Being entertained. Starting again.

Once again, I don't think there is necessarily someone behind a big desk who organised all of this. I simply think that systems tend to perpetuate themselves. And that if you never take the time to look at them from the outside, you naturally end up living inside the frame you were given.

The problem is that everything becomes blurrier

Questioning things is not necessarily comfortable. Quite the opposite.

When you start, an enormous number of certainties disappear. What was very clear becomes blurrier. You realise that some decisions have no perfect answer. That intelligent people can completely disagree. That two people can look at exactly the same situation and reach two opposite conclusions.

It can be destabilising. But I prefer it that way. Because the blur also opens up possibilities.

If only one way of living is correct, you don't really have a choice. If only one career is reasonable, you don't really have a choice. If only one way of keeping your money exists, you don't really have a choice.

From the moment you accept that the frame can be questioned, other paths appear. Some will be bad. Some will probably be completely stupid. Others can change your life.

So the goal is not to become someone who says no to everything. That would just be a new form of automatic thinking. The goal is rather to keep your brain open long enough to be able to ask yourself: "What if what we consider normal were simply one possibility among others?"

From there, everything becomes a little less clear. But a lot more interesting.

Back to the notebook