Can You Live with "Why"?

Do we always have to have the answer to "why"? I think it is human nature to want to have the answer to every question. We have this tremendous need for closure. Uncertainty seems to drive most people crazy, yes, including me! However, the reality is, sometimes, we will just not know the answer. The question I pose to you right now is this. Can you live with an unanswered “why”?

I think that a lot of people would find peace if they were able to learn to live with uncertainty. Sometimes, there really is no definitive answer. For example, in the world of oncology, there are so many unknowns. The patients I work with often want an answer to why they got cancer. Some cancers have an obvious cause. If you are a heavy smoker and you develop lung cancer, there is no mystery as to how it happened. However, I have had many patients, who were basically healthy most of their lives, had little to no family history of cancer, yet they had cancer. The inevitable question in situations like this is always “why did this happen to me?” They wonder if they did something to cause their disease or they wonder if the area in which they live was somehow a contributing factor. The hardest thing for them is to just accept that the answer may never be found. They must learn to shift their focus on to the business of dealing with their diagnosis and find peace within the turmoil of such a diagnosis. I have found that the ones who are able to come to an acceptance are the ones who emotionally and mentally seem to do better during their treatment journeys.

So, you may ask how one makes the transition from being the “why me” person to becoming the “it is what it is” person. There is no one size fits all answer for everyone, so I will share what has worked for me. First of all, my faith has been the anchor that has kept me from going adrift in the waves of uncertainty. I always go to Proverbs 3:5, where it says, “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding.” Let that sink in for a second. We do not always have all the answers and if our peace depended on knowing everything, then we would simply never be at peace. My trust in the Lord allows me to know that even if I do not understand why something is happening, I know that He does and I also know that, no matter what, He will work the situation out so that it benefits me in some way, even if the process is painful.

Another important thing I have learned is that I can sit in my distress because it will not kill me and it will eventually pass. Whether or not I know the answer to why something bad is happening becomes inconsequential. I know that I will get through it, so the need to know why fades in importance. Patience becomes more important than the answer to the “why” question. Granted, I am still a work in progress where patience is concerned, but I never said I was perfect!  Stop being so afraid of distress. You will emerge on the other side of it. The frantic search for the answer to “why” will only cause you more distress, especially if there is no answer to “why”.

This is what  I hope and pray for those of you who are reading this and for those who can relate to the need to always have the answers to the unanswered questions. . I hope that you can learn to come to an acceptance that you may not ever know the answer. I hope that you have a trust in God, or a higher power, and know that whatever the situation, you have been equipped to withstand it. The situation, with all of its uncertainty, will somehow work itself through and will work to develop you as a person. Once you can trust and let go of the need to have all the answers, you will find a peace that you never knew was possible. This incessant need to know why only causes fear, anxiety and stress, because the why is not the end goal. Sometimes, the answer does not bring the peace you are expecting it would. The peace comes from the letting go, and the wisdom comes from learning through the process. Now, I ask you again, can you live with “why”? Today, I challenge you to try. God bless!

Imagine

I had a dream the other night that I felt compelled to share. It was a very impactful dream. I was walking and I came to a crowd of people. I cannot tell you where this was or who these people were, just that it was a large and diverse crowd of people. I started to sing John Lennon’s “Imagine”. Sort of like one of those flash mobs, people started joining in with me. Pretty soon, we were all holding hands and singing together.

When I woke from the dream, I felt both a sense of love and peace, but I also felt a sense of deep sadness. The sadness came from the fact that our country, our world, is very far from that dream of unity and the “brotherhood of man” that Lennon sang about. It seems we are all so divided, perhaps as much or more than any other time in history. We are divided by race, religion, gender, political affiliation, and I find myself wondering why. I find myself asking why it seems that hate and anger are eclipsing love and friendship. Is not love supposed to triumph over hate? Is not good supposed to triumph over evil? What are we to do about this?

I have written about the importance of loving one another before, but it is a subject worthy of repeating. I will not pretend that I have the solution to world peace. I will not pretend that I am always a ray of sunshine, every moment of every day, but I will say this. We all have a responsibility to do our part to make sure love wins over hate, that friendship wins over anger, and  that understanding and empathy win over discord and division. We must rise above our human differences to find a place of common ground on which we can build a “brotherhood of man.”

I would venture to guess that underneath all of the opinions, political debates, prejudices, and misunderstandings are myriad commonalities. I learned a long time ago that even though people may have different experiences, emotions are universal. When I was in graduate school, I did an internship in a drug and alcohol day treatment program. I was having the most difficult time getting the clients to trust me and open up to me, because I had never been an addict. One particular day, one of the clients started yelling at me, saying I could not possibly understand the pain he was in because I have never been a drug addict. As he railed on about his despair, I realized that I may not understand what it is like to be a drug addict, but I did understand despair. When he finally stopped yelling at me, I said, “You are right, I can’t really understand, but help me to understand what it was like for you. I know what despair feels like, but help me understand what it feels like for you.” In that moment, whether or not I had ever been a drug addict no longer mattered to him. I allowed him to sit with his despair in the safety of my empathy and I listened to him without judgement. In that moment, we made a human connection of kindness.

We are all different. We all have had different experiences that shape who we are. We may disagree with one another, on many issues, but we share one very important thing. We are all sharing the human experience. No matter where we come from, we are all human beings. In our experiences, we have all had pain, fear, despair, some more than others, but the universal emotions are things we can all speak to, at one level or another. We all do not have to agree. There are aspects of each of our lives that others may never really understand fully, but we can listen. We can empathize with the emotions of others. We can extend kindness to connect each other. We can share love to heal wounds.  As John Lennon said, “Imagine all the people living life in peace. You...you may say I'm a dreamer, but I'm not the only one. I hope someday you'll join us and the world will be as one.” Can you imagine that? God bless!