The questions you ask can produce different answers depending upon your viewpoint.
Many centuries ago, there was a village in Europe that was hit by a strange plague. The plague caused the victim to fall into a deep coma that mimicked death. The coma was so deep that the doctors of the day couldn’t tell if the person was actually dead. Most died within a day, but on a few rare occasions, a victim miraculously came out of the coma and survived. One day, it was discovered that a victim, who was thought to be dead, was in fact buried alive.
The townspeople shocked by the revelation summoned the village elders to devise a solution to the problem. The majority recommended that they bury food and water with the victim, but that would have been an expensive solution. However, one person recommend that they simply install a wooden stake in the lid of the coffin above where the victim’s heart would be. Therefore when the lid was placed on the coffin, the steak would stab the person in the heart and there would no longer be any doubt as to whether or not the person being buried was dead.
What differentiated the solutions was the question used to find the answer. One group asked, “What if we bury someone alive?” The other asked, “How can we make sure everyone we bury is dead?”
Can you change the viewpoint of your question to expose a different answer to your problems?
