Questions Asked

Questions Asked, first published in 2016, is a book of sixteen first-person reflections, each built around a question the author puts to himself. Its premise is stated at the outset — “A question asked marks the beginning of thought processes that lead to answers” — and the questions are the plain, hard ones: Do I love my life? Who am I? Have I grown? They open onto success redefined as loving your own life, self-knowledge as the foundation happiness is built on, time as the easiest asset to spend recklessly, dreams that die only when their owner kills them, and gratitude learned from having seen worse.

Innocent Mwatsikesimbe reasons from his own turning points — an offer let go that surprised people who thought they knew him, something lost and long afterwards returned — and states the answer he reached before handing the question on. The chapters stand alone and can be read in any order; the last turns the method on the largest question of all, What is life?, and settles on the simplest answer it can defend: live.