Why Ask Why

“I don’t always get to know why.”
—Judith R. Smith

Often we can get so caught up in asking why that we cannot move on. We want to know why our parents treated us the way they did; or why someone stopped dating us; why our spouse had an affair; why we didn’t get the job; why we got sick; or any number of why’s.

The problem with why is that most of the time whatever happened was out of our control. We may blame ourselves and say we’ll do it different next time, when we don’t even know what to change because we don’t know the answer to why.

It’s difficult. Many of us are way more comfortable with the known than the unknown. Even if we don’t like the reason we can attempt to manipulate our thinking to remove the blame if we know that we are at fault. We can use denial, blame someone else, or anything that makes us feel better instead of owning our issues. But when we don’t know why we are left to our own vivid imaginations and that can be a troubling place to be.

Sometimes things just happen and the why doesn’t even make sense. Our parents may have treated us differently than we would have liked, but even if we knew why it would not change the fact that it happened. It might help us forgive them more, but if the reason wasn’t a good one in our opinion, then it could make things more difficult to forgive.

It’s not a bad thing in situations to know why if that information is available, we just want to avoid getting stuck in a place where we need to know why when we probably will never know, or getting to the bottom of it would just cause more strife.

All we can do when reasons are unknown is go on what we do know. If we are aware of behaviors that we are not happy with in ourselves, then we work on growth and avoid that behavior in the future. What we don’t want to do is change who we are in order to get an outcome we want, especially if that is based upon a particular loss that we are having difficulty getting over. If we are not true to our self no matter what we do we will end up unhappy.

We don’t always have to know why.

Patience Equals Peace

“The key to everything is patience. You get the chicken by hatching the egg, not by smashing it.”
—Arnold H. Glasgow

The need to be patient seems at times to come about at every turn.

We are either waiting for someone to come or for them to go. We are impatient about time moving too fast or too slow. We get in a rush and find ourselves in a traffic jam with no way to get where we are going fast. We wait on God to answer our prayers and we are impatient.

When we are impatient it is probably about as far from peace as we can go. When we are impatient we become oversensitive and every feeling is exacerbated. We push too hard. We become agitated too easily. We cause some things to spin out of control.

Patient is one of the most difficult things to be when we are in the midst of something that requires it. But given our options there’s usually little else to do than be patient. We will get what we need when we need it.

We live in a world where instant gratification has become a reality in some ways but not all. But because we do have some things so quickly and at hand immediately, we have come to expect all things to be this way. The universe does not operate at computer speed. Nature has not changed because of technology.

So it is with relationships and issues with work and anything that isn’t immediate. We must “give time, time” as someone recently said to me. We seldom have much of a choice in situations but to be patient.

Finding patience in the midst of waiting will bring peace.

Feeling Discontent

“Perhaps our eyes need to be washed by our tears once in a while, so that we can see life with a clearer view again.”
—Alex Tan

We all have those times in our lives when we cannot seem to find a way to feel better about things. We may be feeling down because we can’t have what we want in a job, relationship, or some other area of our life. And no matter what we do it seems we just feel sad and discontent.

It happens to everyone. We may not think so because some people don’t allow others to know their feelings. They keep things bottled up so as to avoid appearing human. But those of us who try to be in touch with our feelings and emotions know that we will go through these times.

Sometimes we can pinpoint the reason we feel blue and at other times we don’t really have one particular thing. If we can’t have something we want and we keep trying to get it, the solution to that is to just let go. We can turn whatever it is over to our Higher Power and see what happens.

Sometimes we are hurt by other people. We cannot force someone to love us. We can’t make people spend time with us or be who we want them to be in our lives. Sometimes when people don’t meet our needs we feel rejected. But usually it’s not so much that they are rejecting us as much as it is they are trying to take care of their own needs. If this is one of our issues we must learn to differentiate what are our issues and what are theirs. And we need to have multiple sources for getting what we need, including giving to ourselves.

Life is going to have all kinds of struggles. We just have to get through the times in our lives when we’ve got the blues and keep trudging forward until we walk out of the haze and into the brightness of a new day.

Persevering through the rough times gives us wisdom.