This evening I listened to a talk that Don Miller gave a Harvard University called the “Journey Back To Faith” and during his talk he encouraged the students at Harvard to ask the “why” questions and not the “how” questions in life. This got me thinking that I have been the kind of person for as long as I can remember that has asked the “why” questions.
And then I thought maybe the thing (the problem??) with me is that I ask the “why” of life too often and the “how” very seldom? Then again maybe this is a good thing and maybe I have been listening to the wrong voices for too long and they had begun to wear me down, suck the life out of me. Socrates did say that the unexamined life is not worth living…
Then I remembered a series of “why” questions that I wrote out a long, long time ago. Twenty one years ago actually and I think they are all still valid – they were hand written on yellow legal pad pages and luckily I had them with me tonight in a Rubbermaid container of stuff I have been carrying around with me on this nomadic existence of mine. Anyway, here are the questions I was pondering (twenty one years ago)…if anyone wants to respond or answer them send me an e-mail with your thoughts to cgfletch@yahoo.com.
Questions I wrote on September 22, 1988:
Why do I always know the right things to do or say when it is too late?
Why am I attracted to people that I can’t help but care about and can see what is going to happen to them but I am useless to stop or change anything?
Why do I wonder if people I have been close to remember me and really know how I care for them?
Why do good things (relationships) have to end?
Why am I destined to live so far away from those I care about?
Why can’t I communicate how I feel?
Why is it so hard to say “I love you”?
Why are people the way they are?
Why is it others can’t feel or read what I am feeling but I can feel or read what they are feeling?
Why am I attracted to the sea and the mountains?
Why are history, memories, friends, places, and sunrises important?
Why do I wonder if people really mean it when they say, “I’ll be thinking about you”?
Why do I wonder if people say hello or goodbye to someone else when you ask them to?
Why are we so scared when there is nothing there?
Why is life a series of hello’s and goodbyes?
Why is it when I say goodbye to best friends it seems as if it is forever?
Why do people ask the same stupid questions?
Why can’t I spend time gallivanting around the world with just a pack on my back?
Why don’t people ask for help when they need it?
Why don’t people cry and ask to be held when they need both?
Why is it so hard to trust?
Why do we wonder when someday will be today?
Why is it why can never adequately be answered?
Why is it that goodbyes so difficult and hello’s so awkward?
Why do we wonder about when it is we will grow up?
Why is it when you loose a little star thing do not turn out the way you want them to?
Why is it why can never adequately be answered?
I think the why questions are really important, too. I prefer them to the point of frustration sometimes. Sometimes it is just easier to ask and answer the how questions.
ReplyDeleteReflect by Madeleine L'Engle
ReplyDeleteThe great artists keep us from frozenness, from smugness, from thinking that the truth is in us
rather than in God,in Christ our Lord. They help us to know that we are often closer to God in our
doubts than in our certainties, that it is all
right to be like the small child who constantly asks:
Why? Why? Why?