The Riddle of the Why

On the television screen I am watching a mountain lion chasing a little snowshoe bunny. The bunny darts across the snowdrift inches away from the death bite of the lion. The bunny’s life is on the line with every evasive hop. The fierce and determined lion is in hot pursuit. I want the bunny to escape. I am cheering for the bunny because I see him as the underdog, the victim of this brutal attack by this big vicious lion. When the bunny finally escapes, I am happy. But why? It is because I attach human motivations to the lion’s behavior. I emotionally view the lion as an aggressive bully and the bunny as a harmless victim. But that is not an accurate description of either of them. The lion is not mean, it is not brutal or a bully. The lion is a predator. The bunny is neither innocent nor a victim. The bunny is the prey. Animals are driven by instinct. Their singular goal is to survive and procreate. The why of their existence is prescribed by nature and their instinctual reaction to it. Human beings have risen to an intellectual level in which they are no longer ruled by survival instincts. Human intelligence has evolved to the point where we are able to manipulate the environment, not just endure and survive. But with this power to control life has come good and bad intellectual and emotional forces. The decisions we make and the behaviors we exhibit are ruled by choice not instinct.

As we try and determine the reasons for our actions, do we face the honest why or do we embrace the why that satisfies the moment? Will our why create excuse or accurately describe? Does the why we privately tell ourselves mask the symptom or discover the disease? Can our why change the future or merely justify the past? Does our why support self-preserving illusion or accurately define the soul? Is the why a quest for discovery or an attempt to evade detection? This is the conundrum…the riddle of the why.

If it were possible for me to go back over my more than fifty-five years on this planet and have two minutes of time, to use in small amounts, to make different choices, I could change the entire course of my life. For example, I would walk away instead of fighting. I would remain quiet instead of giving my unwanted opinion. I would treat the police officer with respect instead of disdain. I would keep the job instead of quitting in apparent anger. I would remain true to my relationship instead of choosing infidelity. I would play hard without intentionally hurting opposing players. I would not drive after drinking alcohol. I would go away to college instead of staying local. So why did I choose the lesser or wrong course? For most of my life these were my reasons: I fight because that is what a man does. I speak because I know better and believe I should be heard. I do not respect the police and I refuse to be a hypocrite. I quit my job because the foreman disrespected me. I can do what I want because I am not married. I play hard and hurting the opposing players is part of the game. I drive better drunk than most people drive when they are sober. I can’t go away to college because my girlfriend lives here. These were all answers to the whys of my life. My answers were plausible.  My whys seemed to satisfy the facts of each circumstance. I would believe in my version of why. I would think that I was enlightened by my reasoning and that I would now act differently, but inevitably I would return to the same behavior. All of my whys, without exception, were self-protecting lies.

The why is not an excuse. The why is not to deflect personal responsibility or to blame another. You must find the real why in your life and then work from there. This can be accomplished by moving past your initial answer to why. You must allow yourself time to let go of your initial why and think of other possible reasons for the things you do. In many cases your first answer to the why is a conspirator of your behavior. Behaviors which are driven by human weakness, a need to be loved, a lack of self-worth, and underlying insecurity. It is the second and third answer to the question of why that moves one away from false self-protecting excuses and toward honest introspective reasoning.

This is what I now know. These are my whys. I would fight because I learned at an early age that my father respected toughness and I wanted desperately for him to love me. I needed to be heard so that people would think I was smart because I was not intellectually confident. The police scared me so I disrespected them to hide my fear. My foreman ridiculed me and that made me feel weak so I quit in conjured anger. I was afraid of abandonment so I could not fully commit to monogamous relationships. In sports, I played ultra-aggressively so my teammates and coaches would admire me. I drank to mask sadness and I drove intoxicated because my guilt made me hate myself to the point of not caring about my well-being. I did not go away to college because I was terrified of leaving the little world I knew. These were, and in some cases, continue to be my real whys.

I will never be granted the two minutes to go back and change the course of my life. Knowing my whys does not guarantee future success. I am not cured of my weaknesses and fears but knowing the basis of my actions and understanding my whys, allows me to stay focused on improving instead inventing excuses and explaining away my shortcomings.