Our brains are wired to seek the why in everything. We are engineered by evolution to look for a cause and a reason.
Absent one or the other, or both, we create them.
It is one of the precursors of religious doctrines that there must be a why for everything in the universe.
And if there is a why, it follows that there must be a cause.
A Who.
The logic is flawed.
There exists a succinct, sublimely apropos, colloquial expression for this. This perfectly defines and explains the reality.
Shit Happens.
Try as we might to find a cause and a reason, they don’t often exist.
This compunction to look for a why and who in every experience or matter indicates something we expect to be, not something that must be.
An illustration.
The other day, I went to work.
Here is a partial moment by moment breakdown of the first hour or so.
11:00 Start work, sign in, check email
11:10 Get coffee
11:15 Discuss issue with other supervisor regarding work situation
12:00 Informed by slightly excited subordinates that a potential situation requires my assistance
12:01 Identify problem. Begin CPR on an elderly woman not breathing
12:10 Apply AED device to woman, get “Shock not Recommended” response
12:11 Continue CPR
12:20 Relinquish responsibility for CPR to Paramedics
12:25 Watch as Paramedics, continuing CPR, transport patient
12:30 Get second coffee and listen to all the non-participants recount the details to each other
12:40 Back to work
One could spend the rest of your life trying to find a Why and a Who.
There is none.
The only thing that happened was a When.
I was there, When.
Everybody that was a witness to it was there, When.
There was no Why.
There was no Who.
Shit Happens, Whenever,
