In my training as a therapist, I had to learn to stop asking people “why?” Asking why tends to send a client into a spiral of thinking, taking their attention away from the immediacy of what is happening into a multi-layered and complex story about what seems to be happening, what seems to have happened, or what might happen.
Why am I writing this article in this particular coffee shop? Because I like the coffee here. Because it’s close to where I live. Because I felt inspired to write this morning. These responses are part of a story of how I ended up in this coffee shop, but they don’t actually answer the question of why.
In fact, when the question why is asked, there is always an implicit and subtle seeking for some fundamental cause of the way things are, but the only way the question can be addressed is by assuming that what is really being asked is “how” or “how come.” So then the story begins.
With a question like “Why am I writing in this coffee shop?” The story of it being near home and my liking of the coffee here seems to be satisfying enough. Phew, it’s not completely arbitrary that I find myself here. I even have a story about how I got here: I remember driving my car here. Good, everything fits together so far.
In reality, the question of why is often asked about what seems like much more substantial…
