2 min read

Asking Why

Pondering how we got here
Asking Why
I ask Why — pen on paper © by Dave Graham

March is already becoming challenging for a million reasons, big and small. Emma and I are facing more significant opportunities and challenges that have come into the new year with quite a fury and are demanding some resolution. Much of this is out of our hands, and the controllable parts from where we sit feel overshadowed by the mountains ahead.

It’s caused us to ask “why” a lot. Why are we choosing this or that? Why is one option “better” even though they’re both good? Why, why, why…There’s a privilege to these questions because there’s not the blood-fueled urgency sitting behind them, demanding a life’s sacrifice, but they’re still daunting.

I’ve had a lot of conversations in the past week with coworkers from my past. I’ve always kept in touch, poorly at times, but reconnecting, asking questions, and finding out their stories have been excellent. I’ve found a general discontentment amongst those of my age and in my sector, an underlying churning that’s bubbling up into the “whys” of process and procedure. The pursuit of fame and fortune, such as it once was, has settled to a background bellyache, a reminder that success is often measured in the number of hands we shake versus, perhaps, more meaningful moments. But to wrap our heads around this unsettled moment of the soul, we’re brought back to the “why.”

Humans search for meaningfulness. It’s coded in our genes, embedded in our psyche, and present from birth to death. We have an innate drive to find our place in the grand cycle, to fit into the whole, and to derive a reward from the risks we take on behalf of our community. This cycle is ancient and episodic, no different save the means, from Neanderthal to Neo-Technologist. Our world seems to have created wealth from nothing and derived status and success from the baubles of our fascination, a rehashing of the discovery of fire.

We are driven to the “whys.” We are hungry to find the solutions to our existential problems. We take our curiosity, turn it into conversations, and then curate our experiences to ensure that the rewards exist in a more excellent ratio than the remonstrances. You and I are basic, unfettered opportunists, driven to the need to scratch our meaningfulness itch.

March will be the month of “whys”, regardless of the outcomes. If things resolve to what we believe to be the affirmative, it’ll result in happy wonderment. If it results in the opposite, we’ll be left asking “why not” and endeavouring to do different, better things. Regardless, we’re still left holding the bag of “why.”

I’d pose this question to you: why have you chosen your specific path through life? Why has it been meaningful, and if you find yourself questioning even that, why not? Perhaps if we start asking ourselves “why” we do what we do and why we’ve done what we’ve done, we may end up in a place of disbelief, wonder, and course correction. We may have avoided asking this one simple question for so long because we know, deep down, that the answer will not be satisfactory.

Take the time to reflect and understand your “whys”; maybe, in all the noise of spring’s incoming celebration, you’ll find another answer you’ve been seeking.

May it ever be so.