#132 - Two Questions That Change Everything {Reflections}

Two questions can stop you in your tracks, the way a guard’s shout can freeze a stranger at the wrong gate: Who are you? And what are you doing here? Ryan opens with an old story about Rabbi Akiva taking a wrong turn and ending up face-to-face with a Roman garrison. The guard calls down those two questions, and instead of brushing them off, Akiva treats them like treasure, so valuable he’d pay to hear them every morning. 

That’s the heart of this reflection: identity and purpose aren’t vague “someday” topics. They’re daily essentials. We talk about why so many of us move through life distracted and half-awake, invested in work routines and small ego projects while never really examining what we’re becoming. With Socrates’ warning about the unexamined life in the background, we lean into a simple contrast: asleep versus awake. Awake means honest reflection, clear priorities, and a life that matches your values instead of your momentum. 

You’ll walk away with a practical, repeatable habit: ask those two questions each day, and let the answers shape your choices before the years slip by. If this landed for you, share the episode with a friend, subscribe for more reflections, and leave a review. What’s your answer today to “Who are you?”

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Transcript

Rabbi Akiva Meets The Guard

Two Questions For Daily Life

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SPEAKER_00 0:16

What is up everybody? Hey, this is Ryan, and welcome back to another episode of our Reflections podcast. One of my favorite stories is a story I heard a while ago about a rabbi called Rabbi Akiva. And the story goes like this. I love it. Rabbi Akiva is walking home one day, and um he he's like lost in thought, and it's getting darker, and he's he comes to this fork in the road and he goes left when he should have gone right. He just was like lost in his thought and distracted, and he went the wrong way. And he ends up in front of this huge Roman garrison, like this big, you know, like Roman outpost, military outpost. And he like is shocked, he kind of like comes to his senses and looks up, and there's this guard up on top of the wall, and the guard yells down at Rabbi Kiva. He goes, Hey, who are you and what are you doing here? And Rabbi Akiva's like, What what'd you say to me? And the guard says, uh, I said, Who are you and what are you doing here? And Rabbi Kiva says, uh, hey, how much are they paying you to stand on that wall and ask those two questions? Who are you and what are you doing here? And the guard is like caught off, you know, caught off guard, no pun intended, but he's like a little bit surprised and he's like, I don't, I don't know, like 10 denarius a week. And Rabbi Kiva says, Listen, man, I'll pay you double that to come to my house every single morning and ask me those two questions. Who are you and what are you doing here? I love that. So I would ask you these two questions. Who are you and what are you doing here? Socrates once said that the unexamined life is not worth living. And there's many of us that wander through life with our heads down, our eyes closed. I love the language of asleep versus awake. And we wander through life asleep, plug it into the matrix, whatever, you know, whatever you want to say, how you want to say it, and we just are not awake. And we don't examine and much of anything. And we kind of, you know, uh, we invest ourselves into our nine to five and these little petty ego projects, but we really don't know who we are and what we're doing here. And I just want to encourage you to like, hey, these are two fundamental questions in life. And I would ask yourself every day because then when you get to the end of your life, you'll have maybe gotten to the some, you know, the bottom of some of it. Otherwise, many people that I know live out their days and their years and their life not asking any of these questions or even any good questions. So I would ask you again today: who are you and what are you doing here? All right, peace. Hey, if you enjoy this show, I'd love to have you share it with some friends. And don't forget you are always welcome to join us in person at Central in Elk River at 8 30, which is our liturgical gathering, or at 10 o'clock, our modern gathering. Or you can check us out online at clcelkriver.org. Peace.