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,