These questions make for enriching dinner table conversation, but they can be equally illuminating if you simply ask them of yourself. I stumbled onto the idea of asking big questions because I needed them myself. They drive our growth, and we can come back to them year after year.

1. How do you decide who is in your family? Who gets put on your family tree?
2. Are there people you’re not related to whom you treat like family? What leads you to treat them that way?
3. Conversely, do you have relatives you don’t treat like family why?