In our Buddhist study group, our teacher often reminds us not to ask "why" questions. She is including not asking ourselves even, probably because we get caught up in analyzing instead of feeling, and detach ourselves from our moment to moment experience. Asking another person why is even more loaded, and when I've made that mistake, or someone's asked me why I did something, I've gotten lost in the story, and not been satisfied with the answer.
I had a friend, many years ago, with whom I had an argument, and we stopped seeing each other. When she suggested we meet halfway between the towns where we lived, I agreed, and felt closer to her when she explained how she now realized, through the help of her therapist, that she wasn't angry at me, but that somehow I represented her mother in some nebulous way. We parted amicably, and I soon moved out of state, but when I returned seven years later, and ran into her on the street, we set a date to have dinner and catch up. She asked me why we hadn't kept track of each other. I reminded her of our dinner right before I left and what she told me. She didn't remember the dinner at all and was upset that in my version she blamed herself. It had never happened, she stated. Needless to say, we've not met since.
We would have been better off avoiding the whys both times. The issue had been simple. Many times she came and stayed with me and my family for the weekend, and I prepared meals and welcomed her. But when I visited her, the refrigerator was empty, I was on my own for all meals, and the last time she announced she was going out to dinner that night, though I'd come up to see her. She didn't invite me or apologize. I told her the relationship seemed uneven. She expected attention when she came to me, but ignored me when I saw her. It didn't seem fair. Her why assumed if she gave an excellent reason, I would feel better. But I didn't. The whys obscured some real straight talk that needed to happen but didn't.
When a friend of mine killed herself, I worked myself up into a frenzy of whys. Hers and mine. A few days later another friend asked me "What makes you think you had the power to save her?" I stopped compulsively analyzing and let myself feel the grief. She was gone; I was devastated. End of story. The story could not be rewritten. I knew some of the whys automatically, but I would never know them all. That knowledge of "don't know" is hard to sit with. But life has it's mysteries, and we cannot find any answers through questions but through experiences, observations and being a witness to our own mindstream.
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