Questions That Work

Why is pretty worth­less. Give me what, when, and how any day. When you get stuck in why, you go in cir­cles look­ing for the black cat in the dark base­ment that is prob­a­bly not there any­way. Why keeps Freudian ana­lysts in groceries…and new cars. It is the inter­rog­a­tive of doubt and uncer­tainty. It is also the way to start your sen­tences so that you never get any­thing done. All of your ener­gies are drained off by analy­sis. There is noth­ing left for the task.

Prac­ti­cal­ity is much along the line of the old adage, “Ours is to do or die, and not to rea­son why!” It is not that I am sug­gest­ing a mind­less route through the dif­fi­cul­ties of life. There is much value in pon­der­ing, but get­ting lost in why is a trip on the merry-go-round of the inde­ci­sive. Going from why to what is the ticket to pro­duc­tiv­ity. There are things you can do about your lot in life right now. Ask­ing how you got where you are is a fair ques­tion, but if you get lost in the great meta­phys­i­cal why you will find your­self in the woods of bewil­der­ment with­out a com­pass.

Stay­ing on track means ask­ing your­self, “What do I do next?” It is a far supe­rior ques­tion to “Why am I in this mess?” Get real. Stay in ques­tions that have solu­tions. There are wis­dom cir­cles that have this pretty well mas­tered. They say, “Only God knows why and He isn’t telling.” So get on with it!

That is pretty good advice. Look for the what and the how and the why will take care of itself. We are indeed mys­ter­ies to our­selves. We even do things that are beyond all ratio­nal expla­na­tion and analy­sis. Look at what you did and get on with life. Most of all, don’t waste your time ana­lyz­ing oth­ers. You are not in the “God-track” of the in-the-know from some Divine per­spec­tive. You are human. Have a lit­tle humil­ity. High horses and long falls are some­how con­nected.

Let me see, where is my list of things to do today? Ah, here it is. Find­ing out why is nowhere on it, so it looks like I will accom­plish a lot today.