Why?

“Why” is a lie. “Why” lives in the world of mechanics, of cause and effect, of billiard balls bouncing endlessly off each other. The true nature of reality is much more quantum than that - more holistic, more interconnected, more holographic.

Every bit of our behavior is an outgrowth of everything that has gone before. It is our path – every bit of it. Ours uniquely, as no other. And it all hangs together – it fits together as our own little jigsaw puzzle, or a rare vase that has fallen and shattered, and which we spend our lives piecing back together.

Courses on “Interviewing Skills” teach people to not use the “Why?” question, because it makes people defensive. These courses might say that people get defensive because this question pries into their motivations, their inner states. That’s all true, but there’s more: the question “Why?” has no valid answer. We might not be able to verbalize this truth, but some part of us knows it.

When we try to answer the “Why?” question, we just go back and make up a story. The story might be interesting – it might even disclose some meaningful information about us. But it doesn’t answer the question.

We might get into ballpark answers if we said things like:

- Because I’m me, having had all the experiences I have had in this life.

- Because, in that particular moment in time, that was all I could possibly have done.

- I have no real answer for why I did it. I can glimpse pieces of what was going on in me just before I did it, but I don’t know how those pieces got there. It’s all way too big, too complex for me. And it will make me crazy trying to figure it out. So I’ll let it go. It was what it was, this moment is as it is – and the next moment will be exactly what it will be. And it will surprise me.