Your Why

Sooner or later we end up at the big questions. If we have avoided “why” questions, they will not avoid us. Eventually they make themselves present. Again. And again. The “why” questions are persistent, looming, and dangerously important. Don’t run!

Many have a more nuanced response and simply pre-occupy themselves with as many other things as possible. Avoiding the “why” is much more pleasant, at least initially. That ball of unsettled tension, though, will only travel down, deep within your body. 

And plant. 

Those foundations of stress and anxiety deep within are not from the current tensions of everyday life, but from the deep, underlying bleakness of having bland, vague “whys.”  As we zero in on clarity, on really knowing why we are here, something changes. 

The culture in our body changes, much like the culture of an organization can change. As we navigate our why, parts of us in conflict begin working together toward harmony, as if we turn down the tension knob in our internal ecosystem (and turn up the peace).

Knowing your “why,” though, does not mean knowing your “what.” It is possible to have your why in theory. One might be a more theoretical person by nature. Someone who thinks a lot. For such people it is possible to know the why questions without a what. 

Being overly concentrated on the perfect “whys” can potentially alienate people from immediate surroundings. When everything is run through the constricting matrix of the why, it can become unnatural and inorganic. Forced. 

Yes, one can be too deliberate. It is possible.

That may not seem like a thing but it is. There is such a thing as thinking too much. Making too much sense. Being too consistent. That person may have internal integrity, but at the price of being almost intolerable to be around. They know too much!

Life does not work that way. It does not submit to our whys. If we are overly rigid about doing only what is theoretically consistent for us, we will conveniently not do much at all. Our “what” will never get a chance to blossom, for fear it might smear our why. 

Eventually our goal is to get to a genuine, inspired “what.” We want to know our why.  We do! And as much as humans can know, we will know. But we can be stifled by too much clarity. The point is not intellectual purity, it is clarity and confidence in our what. 

We will jump in! Our why will not be merely a theory we are testing. It will be our life, and we will be living it. We will entrepre-new (if you will) in our communities, connecting our creative passions by both what we do and yes, why we do it. 

That’s the perfect recipe for culture-makers: to create out of ourselves, to live unashamedly artfully. To do what we are given to do even before we know how it all fits. And to receive the gift of other’s heart-filled entrepreneurial work (food, art, culture).  

And with a heart overflowing with gratitude and inspiration, the creative simply creates. This is where we “give back.” It is the creative “side” that sometimes end up being the main dish. This is our “what” - to give back what has been given to us.

That’s why!