Please read along with me. Sometimes more words are needed.

As writers, youll understand and take the time. Thank you for your attention. I welcome your comments. I. I like the geologic idea that rocks with origins high on mountains are ground down and become smaller and smoother as they migrate down streams and rivers. Its like that with some words too. The verb to ask has origins that precede Old English and comes to us, says the Oxford English Dictionary, worn down. That may be. But there is power in asking and it has been on my mind lately. Ask is a simple word. You can, for example, ask someone for directions, for a date, or for a job. Sometimes asking is a means of inquiry and no more: What is your name? Where do I catch the bus? How old are you? But sometimes one wants to ask more. A bigger question. More from life. Or make a life-changing inquiry. These questions are, to me, more interesting than the simple inquiry. You can turn the word into a noun if you want to. Politicians I know often say, I am going to make an ask. Its usually when they are requesting money but are afraid to. But it is the verb that is powerful and it is in the sense to call for a thing desired that asking interests me. I believe when we develop the art of asking we gain the power to better our lives and to make them more interesting. Would you like to do that? To call for a thing desired raises expectations. It suggests the way we request something is to make a call. But more, it is to call for something we desire. What do you desire and how do you make the call? II. Leading business consultant Keith Ferrazzi is a graduate of the Harvard Business School and author of the best-selling Never Eat Alone. Keiths beginnings are humble. He learned and teaches that none of us, no matter how unlikely or magnificent our success, is what is called self made. We all have help along the way. I once had a conversation with Bill Gates Sr. in an airport. He talked about how nobody, and by nobody he was surely talking about his son and others like him, made it on their own. Everyone gets help. On that day, Mr. Gates was talking about the help Americas entrepreneurs gain from our national infrastructure, our education system, our banking system and more. He knows talent is vital. But without help it would go nowhere and nobody becomes among the richest men in the history of the world without having asked for and received help along the way. Help comes in many ways. You may be lucky enough to be born in a country with a stable, progressive economy and government. You may be born to a family of means. Or you may simply need to learn how to ask. Asking, no matter where you live or what your circumstance, is an art worth learning. Ferrazzi wasnt born knowing how to ask. He also had to learn. He tells a story of riding in the car with his father who spotted a Big Wheel tricycle in someones trash. His father stopped the car, knocked on the door of the home and asked, I spotted this Big Wheel in your trash. Do you mind if I take it? I think I can fix it. It would make me feel wonderful to give my son something like this. Of course the homeowner said yes. And the young Ferrazzi learned a lesson about the power of asking--it is an exchange with value on both sides, one side giving, the other receiving. III.

In his brief essay titled The Universe is Conspiring to Help Us, Kevin Kelly tells how he trusted making a daily ask. For a time when he was young, Kelly hitchhiked to work every day. He relied upon the generosity of strangers to respond to his asking for a ride. He describes it as his daily miracle and he was never late to work. Kelly learned that soliciting a gift from strangers requires both preparation and a state of openness. He is aware of the exchange that happens when kindness is given. He says that during the moment the stranger offers his or her goodness, the person being aided offers degrees of humility, indebtedness, surprise, trust, delight, relief, and amusement to the stranger. The miracle flows both ways, Kelly believes. He writes, As a matter of fact, we are all at the receiving end of a huge gift simply by being alive. Yet, most of us are no good at being helpless, humble, or indebted. Clearly, in my view, Kevin Kelly was asking for more than directions or a ride and I believe he found much more than either in his daily commute. IV. A new hero of mine, alt-rock icon artist Amanda Palmer has upped the asking ante with her presentation The Art of Asking. Palmer may be controversial, but Im on her team because she takes asking to where I hope to go with it in my life. She talks about how when we give and receive fearlessly and when we ask without shame, we are open to having profound encounters with people. Palmer describes crowd surfing as falling into ones audience with both the performer and the audience trusting one another. Going back to Kellys idea of the universe conspiring to help us, Palmer says that when you connect with them, people want to help you. Both Kelly and Palmer guide us to the idea that through humbling ourselves to asking for what we need, we will be safely caught. Our fans may catch us. Or it could be the universe itself. Either way is fine with me. But what, I wonder, does this kind of asking look or feel like? How can I ask for and receive the help I might need? I dont know for certain, but I have a few ideas that might explain how it happens. V. Serendipity is said to be the most difficult English word to translate to another language. It is a colorful and interesting word. Generally speaking, serendipity occurs when one sets out to find a thing and instead finds something better. Imagine that you are looking for a needle in a haystack and instead find the farmers daughter. That is serendipity. But serendipity can be much more, and like with the process of asking, it happens to one who is open to it and ready to receive the gift. We know when the word serendipity was coined and who invented it. English author Horace Walpole used it for the first time in a letter he wrote to a friend on January 28, 1754. He was familiar with an ancient Persian folk tale about the three sons of the King of Serindib (Sri Lanka), who during their travels had wonderful and surprising experiences. This, reasoned Walpole, was serendipity and so he created a word for the experience. Serendipity can be an adventure in its own right and I commend it to you, but my point is that like asking, the more you trust in it, the more of it you will experience. There is another word we should all know if we are to appreciate serendipity and to understand how the trust involved with asking can create its real magic. The word is sagacity. If serendipity is thought of as a lucky happening when one is looking for one thing and finding another, sagacity is the wisdom or cleverness to connect disparate pieces into something new. Just as many may not see how the universe is conspiring to help them, without sagacity it is unlikely that you will see the value of the connections before you. Which takes me back to another talk by Amanda Palmer.

Whether in science or art, sagacity is where the magic happens. Amanda Palmer describes what happens when one looks for patterns and connects the dots - she doesnt call it sagacity, but that is what it is. Palmer explains that if youre using words to connect the dots youre a writer. And it is within that peculiar writing urge and the impulse to write that lets what she calls the wonder of the unimaginable come forth. This is what you get when you ask large things of the universe and trust that the big questions will all get answered. She also says that connection always comes with risks, but I figure there is really no other way. I worry that I am not being clear enough about serendipity and sagacity. There is a legend about a Peruvian Indian lost in the jungle who was dying of thirst. He came upon a stagnant pool of water into which an evergreen tree had fallen. The belief was that the bark of the tree was poisonous and that the water polluted by it would kill him. Preferring quick death, the Indian drank the water and recovered. By the time the Spanish reached Peru, the tree bark had become a source of quinine and was used as a remedy for fevers and certain types of malaria. This is how serendipity works with sagacity. Serendipity was the luck; sagacity was the wisdom to understand the circumstance and how to use the lucky discovery. When we are open to serendipity and are skilled at sagacity and know the art of asking, we can go to unimaginable places. You may want to develop the art of asking. Steve Jobs said that creativity is just connecting things. Hes not the first to see things that way. In fact, science is where systematic connecting of dots has long been a force. Essayist Stephen Jay Gould, for example, believed his unique talent was in making connections. In his writing Gould used those connections to demonstrate why science and philosophy need each other. There are, as Jobs, Gould, Kelly, Ferrazzi and Palmer all demonstrate, many different ways for each of us to connect the dots. We all have the opportunity to experience our own version of what Amanda Palmer does when she trusts and falls into one of her crowds. Are you ready to ask for yourself and to see what happens? It is time for us all to make the call and ask really big questions. VI. Thank You For Asking As a rhetorical device, asking fascinates me. It is represents kairos at its most perfect moment. When one asks a question, whether simple or profound, logos, ethos and pathos all have a place. Asking, as the OED says, may be worn down as a word, but its power is as intact as ever. Perhaps more so. Thats what Keith Ferrazzi means when he says, today, we need each other more than ever. Both he and Amanda Palmer know, the game has changed. Social media and the internet have made it so that it has never been easier to ask. Each time Amanda surfs a crowd it proves to me that asking remains a very special word and act.

References Allison, Jay & Dan Gediman (eds.), This I Believe II ( New York: Henry Holt & Co., 2008). Brain Pickings Weekly, May 26, 2013. Ferrazzi, Keith (with Tahl Raz), Never Eat Alone: And Other Secrets to Success, One Relationship at a Time (New York: Currency, 2005). The Oxford English Dictionary. (Oxford University Press, 1989-). Palmer, Amanda, The Art of Asking, TED Conferences, Long Beach, California, February, 2013. Palmer, Amanda, Connecting the Dots, Grubb Street Muse & Marketplace Conference, (May 22, 2013).

Remer, Theodore G. (ed.), Serendipity and the Three Princes: From the Peregrinaggio of 1557 (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1965).