It is the questions, not the answers, that truly matter.

If you “get” this image, you are clearly a fan of one of the ultimate cult novels, “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” by Douglas Adams.

So many life lessons (who knew towels were so important?), including:

It is the questions, not the answers, that truly matter.

However, to begin at the beginning, any book that starts with this sentence has me hooked:

“Far out in the uncharted backwaters of the unfashionable end of the Western Spiral arm of the Galaxy lies a small unregarded yellow sun. Orbiting this at a distance of roughly ninety-eight million miles is an utterly insignificant little blue-green planet whose ape-descended life forms are so amazingly primitive that they still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.”

Clearly, digital watches were not a neat idea (who wears a digital watch any more. I mean, who under 40 wears a watch anyway now we have smartphones?), but in 1978 when “HHGTTG” began as a radio comedy, Douglas Adams was far ahead of his time.

Oh, and this genius writing about the Vogon Constructor Fleet spaceships:

“The ships hung in the sky in much the same way that bricks don’t.”

Anyway, beyond the fantastically many fantastically funny lines and thoughts, the book is full of true wisdom.

This is one of 18 life lessons:

It is the questions, not the answers, that truly matter.

When the supercomputer “Deep Thought” finally produced the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything after a calculation period of seven and a half million years, those who were at hand to receive The Answer were left wondering what The Question was in the first place. Our very own Earth was then commissioned to calculate it.

As a coach, and as my friend and mentor Alan Dean teaches (watch/listen to his wisdom on #WhatComesNextLive here), there is often more value in asking the right question than in coming up with the answer.

The whole of the first book of the HHGTTG series centres around finding the answer to life, the universe, and everything. At the end, a reminder that it is the questions, not the answers that truly matter.

I leave you with a photo and a short blog inspired by the photo that gives a sense of this, and one which will cause fellow HHGTTG fans to smile.