Beyond the Facts: Why Our Progress Now Depends on Better Questions

Bishal Lama

Why can't they make a decent foot if they can put a man on the moon?

That question was not asked by a committee, a corporation, or a politician.

It was asked by a man who lost his leg in a freak accident—Van Phillips.

And that one question uttered not out of bitterness but of burning curiosity, changed the world.

This is not just a story about prosthetics.

This is not just a story about invention.

This is a reminder:

We are living in a society addicted to answers, but starving for the right questions.

We were taught to know, not to ask.

We were trained to memorize, not to wonder.

We were conditioned to consume information, not to interrogate it.

But knowledge without inquiry is intellectual obesity—bloated, slow, and lifeless.

Questions are not small things.

They are not childish or naive.

They are the ignition switches of revolutions.

Every disruption began with a single phrase:

“Why the hell are we still doing it this way?”

Van Phillips didn’t settle for “that’s just how it is.”

He didn't outsource responsibility to "them."

He rewrote the question.

From Why don’t they...

to Why don’t I...

And that’s where the shift happens—from curious observer to creative builder.

From victim of circumstance to author of change.

Let me be blunt:

If you’re not willing to answer your own questions, you’re not questioning—you’re complaining.

The world doesn’t need more know-it-alls.

It needs more ask-it-alls.

We are living in a culture where "knowing" has become obsolete.

Facts are at our fingertips.

Answers are automated.

Expertise is outdated the moment it's published.

But the right question?

That’s alive.

That’s oxygen.

That’s what rips the roof off stagnation.

So what can a question really do?

• It can shatter outdated industries.

• It can free people from invisible cages.

• It can bend reality in a better direction.

• It can turn ignorance into insight, pain into purpose, and ideas into inventions.

Most people are afraid of questions.

They fear they’ll look stupid.

They fear they’ll uncover something inconvenient.

But to question is to evolve.

To question is to walk through the fire, knowing that what you emerge with is more truthful than before.

Even war has birthed questions that built peace.

Even ignorance, when paired with curiosity, has sculpted the future.

We need less certainty and more awe.

We need fewer experts and more explorers.

And we need to stop waiting for someone smarter, richer, or more powerful to solve the problems we’re uniquely qualified to question.

The Quiet Power That Rewires Everything

We live in a time where answers are everywhere—YouTube hacks, Quora, ChatGPT prompts, career how-tos, and mental health cheat sheets.

Actually, you don’t lack answers. You lack the right questions.

Because questions aren’t innocent. They’re architecture.

They form the invisible scaffolding of how we think, create, decide, and ultimately, live.

Neurologist Ken Heilman didn’t set out to become a messenger.

But in tracking how the brain engages with divergent thinking—what if, why not, how come—he touched on something sacred: The creative act isn’t just artistic. It’s neurological. Biological. Transformative.

When you ask a new question, your brain lights up differently. You stop looping. You start connecting the dots. You don’t just find a better answer—you enter a new dimension of thinking.

This is not philosophy. This is practice.

Why am I falling behind? will only lead to blame and stagnation.

What if I built something that didn’t exist before? leads to energy, optimism, and possibility.

Here’s the truth:

The quality of your life tracks the quality of your questions.

Not your GPA. Not your credentials. Not your clarity.

Your questions.

The most creative companies, the most fulfilled lives, the most resilient creators—they all have one thing in common:

They stay curious when others cling to certainty.

They ask:

• What business am I really in now?

• What trends are bending reality in my field?

• What skill can I double down on today that future-proofs me for a decade?

• Should I keep trying to get hired—or build something people hire?

  
  

If you’re feeling stuck, lost, overwhelmed, anxious—

Don’t sprint for answers.

Pause.

And ask a better question.

Netflix started because Reed Hastings asked, “Why am I paying $40 in late fees?” That led to, “What if we treated movies like a gym membership?” Today, Netflix is a cultural infrastructure.

Airbnb was born from the question, “What if people could trust strangers to stay in their homes?”

Polaroid: “Why do I have to wait for my photo?”

Better questions change economies.

But they also change you.

Especially now—when the world moves too fast for any one identity to last.

Yesterday’s expert is tomorrow’s beginner. Today’s degree is tomorrow’s Google result. Adaptation isn’t optional anymore. It's a requirement. It's the baseline. And adaptation starts with inquiry.

Ask yourself:

• What am I holding onto that’s already dead?

• What belief about “how it’s supposed to be” is keeping me from building how it could be?

• What would I do if I wasn’t afraid of starting over?

  
  

This isn’t woo-woo. This is leverage.

You don’t need to know the answers yet. But you do need to ask sharper, wider, deeper questions—every single day.

Because we don’t live in the world we’re handed.

We live in a world where our questions allow us to see.

The value of “knowing” is evaporating

Not because we know less.

But because knowledge—static, prepackaged, regurgitated—has become a commodity.

You can Google every answer.

You can download every PDF.

You can summarize every book in 10 seconds.

Information is no longer scarce. But insight is.

Which means: the real value is shifting.

From having the right answers to asking the right questions.

From memorization to meaning-making.

From collection to creation.

We live in an age where the shelf life of expertise is shorter than ever. What did you master last year? Irrelevant today. What do you build a career on? Replaced by an algorithm. What was “true” yesterday? Obsolete by sunrise.

So the question is:

What do you do when answers are cheap?

You learn to ask better questions.

Not because questions are fancy. Not because it sounds profound.

But because questions are the new leverage.

They cut through the noise. They ignite curiosity. They spark original thinking.

Above all: they reframe the world.

A single question—asked with sincerity and precision—can change a life, a business, or a civilization.

Think about this:

Why did a secretary, Bette Graham, invent a $50 million business with correction fluid?

Because she asked, “What if I painted over my typing mistakes?”

Why did Percy Spencer invent the microwave? Because his candy bar melted and he wondered, “What else could this energy do?”

The most disruptive ideas—the ones that build movements and break models—don’t start with answers. They start with wonder.

And if you want to thrive in this new world, you must reclaim your wonder.

Because today, your curiosity is your career path.

Your ability to question is your moat.

And your imagination is your advantage.

Let’s be clear:

We’re not living in the Information Age anymore.

We’re living in the Interpretation Age.

And your success won’t be determined by how much you know—but by how well you think.

That means building a new mental model:

Not “What do I need to remember?”

But “What am I noticing?”

Not “What does the system say?”

But “What’s the system missing?”

Not “What’s the answer?”

But “What’s the real question?”

Machines will always be better at storing facts.

But they can’t feel wonder. They can’t taste paradox. They can’t dream.

You can.

That’s your power.

So the next time you feel overwhelmed by the flood of data, opinions, and expert takes—don’t panic. Zoom out. Question deeper. Frame better.

In a world drowning in answers, be the one who sharpens the question.

The future belongs to the curious.

Why → What If → How: The Questions Framework

Let me start with a question—Why?

Why does everything begin with that one word?

It’s not rhetorical. It’s revolutionary.

“Why” is not just curiosity. It’s confrontation. It's the point where reality no longer satisfies your imagination. It’s the spark that ignites when the world as it is collides with the world as it could be.

Van Phillips

Take Van Phillips. A man who didn’t ask, “Why did this happen to me?” but rather, “Why can’t I build something better?” Not a passive inquiry—a challenge. A refusal to accept what was handed to him.

He didn’t see a missing foot. He saw a broken system. He saw wood and bulk where there could’ve been speed and fluidity. He turned questioning into rebellion.

That’s the magic of Why.

Because every innovation you admire—every product, every movement, every industry—started with a confrontation with the norm.

Reed Hastings asked why he had to pay late fees for a video rental. That question built Netflix.

Tim Westergren wondered why talented musicians couldn’t reach listeners. That question built Pandora.

A football coach in Florida once asked why his players weren’t urinating after games. That question built a $20 billion sports drink industry. Gatorade was born out of bodily fluids, sweat, and one annoying observation.

Let that sink in.

The world doesn't need more answers. It needs better questions.

Most people wait for problems to appear like traffic jams or heartbreak. Innovators go looking for them—problem-finding, not problem-solving. Because if you can find a problem before it becomes one, and ask the right question at the right time, you hold the blueprint to a solution that could change an industry—or your own life.

Ask yourself:

Why is my work unfulfilling even when I hit my goals?

Why am I repeating cycles I swore I’d break?

Why is nobody fixing what everyone complains about?

Why isn’t your Mother-in-law easier to get along with?

(Yes, even that’s fair game.)

These aren’t just philosophical meanderings. They’re calling to build.

The pattern is always the same:

• You face something broken.

• You ask Why.

• You imagine What If.

• You figure out How.

  
  

This Why → What If → How: framework is not theoretical.

It is how every disruptive creator, entrepreneur, artist, and thinker operates. The process itself is the map through chaos.

IDEO, Graham Wallas, and the Creative Problem Solving Institute—they all formalized it.

But you don’t need a PhD to follow it.

You need the courage to ask uncomfortable questions.

You need humility to not rush into the How before understanding the Why.

You need patience to sit in the ambiguity that questions create—because answers are never immediate, but movement can be.

Questioning without action is philosophy.

Questioning plus action is innovation.

When you don’t know what you’re doing, the process will still tell you what to do next.

And it always starts here:

Why.

Stay curious. Stay unreasonable. Stay building.

Original thinking dies when you become obsessed with fitting in

Most people live their lives asking “Why me?” Few take the next step.

Even fewer dare to ask “What if?” Van Phillips did.

When Van lost his leg in a waterskiing accident at age 21, he could have stopped there. He could have resigned himself to the stiff, clunky prosthetics offered to amputees at the time. He could have lived with the limitations that came with them.

But instead, he made a decision—one most people are too afraid to make.

He didn’t just question the industry.

He questioned its assumptions.

And that’s where his journey truly began.

Van didn’t approach prosthetics like an engineer or a technician. He approached it like an outsider with a mission. He wasn’t obsessed with copying what had come before. He was driven to reimagine what could be.

His mentor told him to study old patents. Van refused. “I’m not going to pollute my mind with everyone else’s ideas,” he said.

That’s not arrogance. That’s clarity.

He understood a fundamental truth:

Original thinking dies when you become obsessed with fitting in.

Van gave his mind room to breathe. He let it simmer on questions most people avoid. He didn’t just look for quick answers—he cultivated ideas. He entertained “What ifs” like:

• What if a prosthetic foot could bounce like a diving board?

• What if it mimicked the tendons of a cheetah’s hind legs?

• What if a curved limb, like an ancient Chinese sword, was stronger than a straight one?

  
  

These weren’t polished ideas. They were sparks.

And he followed them.

In his basement lab, he burned himself on hot plates, cured parts in his oven, and watched countless prototypes break under pressure. But he didn’t stop.

Each break was a question.

Each failure, a new hypothesis.

This is the art of failing forward.

Van didn’t “hope” for success. He engineered it. Not in one leap, but in two hundred broken prototypes, each one bringing him closer to the Flex-Foot—his radical, curved-blade prosthetic.

That blade changed lives.

It carried athletes to the Paralympics. It took amputees up Mount Everest. It shattered expectations. And it gave Van his life back. Every morning, he runs the beach in California—on the very question that once kept him up at night.

But here’s what most people miss:

Van didn’t stop at the answer. He kept asking.

He built the Flex-Foot and then asked, “Why does it cost so much?”

Then: “What if I could make it affordable?”

And finally: “How might I do that?”

That’s what separates true innovators from dreamers.

They don’t cling to answers.

They live in the question.

And they build from it.

You don’t need to be an inventor to do this. You just need to adopt the posture of inquiry. Start with Why. Sit with What If. And then move to How.

Not in a rush. Not with fear. But with patience and fire.

This world belongs to those who question it.

It belongs to people like Van Phillips—and it can belong to you too.

Start questioning. Start building.

Your life’s Cheetah blade is waiting.

Stay uncommon.

If you want a better life, if you want a better business, if you want a better world—

don’t start with answers.

Start with better questions.

And then have the courage to be the one who answers them.

With relentless curiosity.