Question Everything

I like this quote. That’s why I’ve included it on my website. It invokes the exact message that I want to convey; that is, that learning isn’t something that you must do, but something that you should want to do. Learning should be something that you enjoy and something that you build into your life because, quite frankly, without it, life just isn’t much fun!

It’s all too easy to fall into the trap of thinking about ‘learning’ as something that you must endure at school, university, or at work. It’s what you must do, rather than about something that you want to do. If that’s your conception of learning, then I’d like to ask you to think more about your past experiences and find examples in your life where you have enjoyed learning something new. What did you do (or did someone do to teach you) that made this an enjoyable and worthwhile learning experience?

Something else that I feel passionate about is the idea that we should question everything. This isn’t an ‘X-Files’ type thing where we should all be looking to find out what the government is covering up (perhaps we should be doing more of that, but that’s not the point I’m trying to make here!). My ‘question everything’ point is more mundane. It’s an open request to you, to think about things in your life that you just accept as ‘normal’ and to ask, is this really the only way? Is this really the only truth? Critically thinking about even the most mundane of things can be a real eye opener.

Let me give you an example. I haven’t used shampoo on my hair for near-on a decade. Now, that might well sound disgusting to you, but please read on, it’s not as bad as it sounds. Instead of commercial shampoos I’ve generally made my own, either using a concoction of water, Rosemary (picked from the garden) and bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) or combining an egg with lemon juice. I also use vinegar as a conditioner – which makes the hair shine! I do miss the bubbly froth that commercial shampoos create on my hair, but other than that there really isn’t much difference. Except there is.

Commercial shampoos have all kinds of chemicals in them. Mine are made from basic ingredients and are not necessary to put on my hair every time I wash. The key is to go through a process of detoxicating your hair first. This requires a few months of having greasy hair, whilst your hair follicles relearn how to control their own natural oils. Shampoos work by replacing your natural oils with its own version. My hair now regulates itself. So, as long as I continue to wash it, my hair generally stays nice and clean, and needs only the occasional boost from homemade shampoos.

So, what does this have to do with questioning everything? Well, I’m glad you asked. Think about shampoo for a moment. How long have commercial products existed? The answer is about 100 years. Of course, the kind of homemade shampoo that I talked about above has existed since ancient times, although there are questions about how many ordinary people used such concoctions in the past. Do we really think that anyone born before 1900 had oily, greasy hair all of the time? Perhaps you do and perhaps they did. I’m dubious though. If my hair can learn to regulate itself after a few months of non-commercial shampoo, then that suggests that humans in the past (as long as they washed their hair at least some of the time) would have had at least acceptable hair. For most of our purposes, there really isn’t a need for chemically produced products to keep our hair clean and nice.

So, a decade ago, I questioned something mundane in my own life – do we need to use shampoo on our hair? If, 100 years ago commercial shampoo barely existed, then how did people manage their hair before then? My answer (and I’m not alone in this – there is a whole “no-poo” movement!) has saved me a lot of money over the last 10 years and – I believe – led to healthier non-toxic hair.

Is there anything which you once considered normal that you have now started to question? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.