Questions.

When I was younger, I was always asking my Dad, why? As I'm sure all kids do, I wanted to know the answer to everything. Why I had to do my chores, why I had to babysit when all my friends were out having fun, why I couldn't go with my parents on vacation, why I had to learn math, etc. etc. When my Dad got tired of answering my endless queries, he would always respond, "to make you ask questions." I hated this answer! "Just tell me!!" I would say. Then he would reply, “Don’t ask. Just do it.”

For some reason, I still get hung up on this question and tonight, as all sorts of “whys?” were bumping around in my head, I thought of my Dad answering, "to make you ask questions." Sometimes we don't understand why things are the way they are. But that's part of life. That's part of the living. I guess the trick is to not get caught up in the asking. "Don't ask. Just do it." I keep coming back to part of the quote I posted a few weeks ago:

 “…try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question…”

Living the question is hard for me. I’ve never been very patient. But I’m working on it. There’s a quote by Mary Engelbreit that has really stuck out to me, “If you don’t like something, change it. If you can’t change it, change the way you think about it.” I don’t like not knowing. But I can’t change it. So for now I’ll work on accepting it.

(photo here)