Without reasons, there is no ‘because.’ So question all reasons. When you deeply and openly question your reasons, does ‘because’ disappear?
– Byron Katie
Any “because” is a guess. It’s something we make up to try to make sense of our choices and actions, and the reality is that we don’t know.
When someone asks me why I am doing something, and I suspect they really want to know, I give them an honest answer: I don’t know, and I may add a few guesses and make it clear these are guesses. Since this goes a bit outside of norms and expectations, it often leads to a conversation about it.
If I suspect the question is more for social reasons and to connect, I may just give a standard plausible answer. Unless it’s in a situation where a conversation about the don’t know and the guesses could be interesting.
For instance, why am I writing here? I honestly don’t know. I find it hard to even come up with guesses. The most honest answer is that I am drawn to it. I feel an impulse in me to write here. What’s that impulse about? I don’t know. I find the topics here interesting. Writing here helps me explore them – it helps me to notice, explore, and write it down. Also, I had a wish to give talks, write books, and so on, on some of these topics. Since my life took a very different turn due to major health problems, writing here is doing some of that in miniature. There is a knowing that something here may be helpful to someone, and if just one sentence is helpful for one person, that in itself would be sufficient. (And that’s already the case since it seems helpful to me.) There may also be other reasons: Perhaps I am writing here to avoid direct noticing and feeling? Perhaps I do it to feel smart and clever? (Although I am very aware that what I write reflects my own very obvious limitations.) Perhaps it’s a way to give some sense of meaning to a day where I mostly have to rest and can’t do much of what I normally would do? (That one resonates.)