Some Table Topics Question Ideas

Either / Or 

These are 'Which would you rather pick and why?'  questions.

You have ten million dollars which you must spend before you die, but only a year to do it OR you are poor but will live with good health until you are 100.

You can work in only one of these settings for the rest of your life: from home OR in an office OR outside OR travelling from place to place.

Everyone finds you incredibly good looking but thinks you're annoying OR everyone finds you ugly but thinks you're the best company.

You can backpack around the world for six months with very little money OR stay in a luxurious resort, all expenses paid, for two weeks.

For a full month you can't brush your teeth OR you can't bathe.

You can be reincarnated as an hummingbird OR as a panda.

You are fluent in every human language OR you can talk with animals and plants.

You remember every detail of every day of your life OR you can remember your dreams vividly.

You can only read the first page of every book OR you can only read the last page of every book.

You live in a tiny apartment in the centre of a big city OR you live in a little cabin in a secluded forest.

You always have to say what you are thinking OR you are frequently compelled to lie for no reason.

You have to wear wet jeans for a whole day OR you have to wear a wet wool sweater for a whole day.

You can never cut your fingernails again OR you can never wash your hair again.

You can hear colours OR you can taste colours.

You have great season tickets for your favourite team that only you can use but they lose every game that you attend OR you can't ever watch your favourite team play again but they will win every game.

You will gain a million dollars if you post a picture of yourself eating every meal to social media OR if you never go on social media again.

You will get the hiccups whenever you have to speak in public OR you will get the giggles whenever you have to say something serious.

You can kill one person without any legal repercussions to you OR you can resurrect one person from the dead.

You're trapped in a room full of snakes OR you're trapped in a room full of spiders.

For the rest of your life you have to eat the same thing every day OR you can never repeat a meal.

You never have to work another day in your life and can live comfortably but you have to live with someone you don't like OR you have to work hard every day for the rest of your life but you live with someone you love.

You can give large amounts of money to your favourite charity every year for the rest of your life but it must remain anonymous OR you can have a building named after you to recognize your philanthropy.

A Creative Process 

These are questions put together by our own Jason Chang.  With a little tweaking, these can be applied to any creative process.

1. If you could write a book on anything, what would it be about and why?
2. Is there a writer/writing that has inspired you?
3. Does the process of writing bring you joy? Or does it bring you fear? Explain.
4. How can reading improve your writing?
5. Do you think the process of writing begins with putting the pen to the paper or with an idea? Which one and why?

Happiness 

These are questions about happiness.

1. Do you agree with Ms Romano, my grade 9 English teacher, who claimed, "Happiness is a philosophy of life"? Why or why not?
2. Do you agree with J.S. Mill who proclaimed, “Happiness is the sole end of human action.”? Why or why not?
3. Do you agree with Friedrich Nietzsche who said, "Man does not strive for happiness, only the Englishman does.”? Why or why not?
4. Studies show that places where everybody is about equally poor are happier than those where both income and inequality are higher. Is happiness about keeping up with the Joneses? Why or why not?
5. People in individualistic (eg Western) societies report higher levels of happiness than people in collectivistic (eg East Asian) ones, beyond what can be explained by socioeconomic factors. Do you agree? Why or why not?
6. Is there a difference between being happy and feeling happy?
7. What, to you, are the differences between the many words we use to describe a positive emotional state: happiness vs joy vs bliss vs ecstasy vs contentment?
8. Are you happy right at this moment? How would you characterize your week/month/year? How does the time-frame influence your judgement?
9. What was the happiest moment of your life? Was it all downhill from there?
10. Which would you choose: a life of high peaks and deep troughs, or a relatively neutral and uneventful emotional state?
11. How can we compare the level of happiness of different people in similar circumstances?
12. Do you believe that the average child happier than the average adult? Why or why not?
13. Do you see the possibility of an objective measure of happiness, along the lines of a brain scan? Why or why not?
14. SOMA™ is the blockbuster pharmaceutical of 2031: it makes people happier without known significant side-effects. Will you take it? Should it be added to the water supply? Why or why not?
15. Is happiness a choice? If so, how and why? If not, why not?
16. What, if anything, is the "key ingredient" in happiness? Why?
17. Can animals be happy in the same way as humans?
18. Are people nowadays happier than in the past?
19. A SF Fed study found that in the 1970s, women reported being significantly happier than men, a gap that has since vanished. Why do you think that happened?
20. Is happiness the goal or is it the journey? Why?
    BONUS QUESTIONS!
21. How would the world be a better place if more people were happy?
22. Is happiness a function of prosperity? Why or why not?
23. What can you as an individual do to make your life more happy?
24. What can you as an individual do to make the lives or others more happy?
25. What can we as a society do to increase our collective happiness?

30 Questions 

These are from a blog post by Georgie Nightingall.

1. What are you craving right now / what have you been craving this week?
2. If you had to wake up 1 hour early every day, what would you do with that hour?
3. Why do you have the ambitions you have?
4. What are, or would be, your faults as a parent? What do you hope parenting changes about you?
5. What piece of advice would you want everyone in the world to hear?
6. In what way are you a difficult person to live with?
7. If you could leave a microwave-sized capsule to be found 1 century from now, what would you put inside?
8. What is something you enjoy now that you never used to?
9. In what ways are you naive?
10. What is one thing that most people misunderstand about you?
11. If it harder to find a job you can love or a person you can love?
12. If your son was going to be stupid, ugly or boring, what would bother you the most? Would this be the same for your daughter?
13. In what way have negative travel experiences positively transformed you?
14. Do you think there’s any truth in the lines: ‘they mess you up, your Mum and Dad. They may not mean to, but they do.’?
15. What personal vulnerabilities and flaws have held you back in your ambitions? In what way have these also been valuable in helping you reach your goals?
16. Who are you? What properties or attributes are distinctly you? Can you lose this property?
17. If you googled yourself in 20 years time what would you want it to say?
18. If you could let someone else live one moment from your life, which moment would you choose and which person would you share this with?
19. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?
20. Based on who you are now, and where you have come from, how do you expect to be different in three years time?
21. How has the death of someone influenced the way you live your life?
22. What are you addicted to right now? Can you have too much of a good thing?
23. In what ways does the pursuit of ‘more’ affect your happiness and fulfilment?
24. What is the most loving thing anyone has ever done for you or you have done for yourself?
25. What aspects of your gender most support who you are? Which aspects don’t?
26. How do you relate to the edge of your comfort zone each day, and how has this changed over time?
27. What lessons could you learn from your childhood self that could benefit you now?
28. The curious paradox is that, when I accept myself as I am, then I can change” (Carl Rogers). What are you trying to accept within yourself at the moment?
29. What is the deepest loss you have felt that was not a death? To what extent do you recognise the impermanent nature of things?
30. How would you describe the financial philosophy that has led to where you are today?
31. How has your upbringing influenced your feelings about investing?