Why? It is a question that has come up in my classes and mentoring groups repeatedly this week. It isn’t the why of blame or criticism. It is the why of self analysis.
Amber (creator of Woman Unleashed) discussed it. She used it as an analysis of action. If I look deeply into a repeated action, and really look at why I do it, eventually I hit emotion. She said it could take twenty layers of questions, and in the depth is self discovery.
What do I want to know about myself? What do I want to change or shift? What needs to be discovered?
I am extremely irritated with my car insurance company. It’s pretty petty. They want all of the particular information on the people who live in my house, who they are insured by, at what level, driving records. To me, this is ludicrous.
I taught driver’s ed. My insurance is maximized! Apparently, Pemco could be paid more if the analysis believes others should be “added”. I am irritated enough to consider shifting companies after nearly forty years of success and appreciation for this one.
Why? How deep do I need to go? If I look inside my thought process, why does this “piss me off”. It really does.
Why? All of us, the members of this household, are responsible. Most of us are overwhelmingly insured. The outlier (who has more moderate, normal levels of car insurance) would never be behind my wheel, never. Kwami, who does drive my car, has equal insurance to my own, from the same company.
Refocus… why? We are doing nothing wrong. We are not cheating the system. The implication is that there is an issue, an accusation. Privacy, they are inside of my personal life, picking at the details.
Why? This angers me because… I don’t know if there is an originating point or story. I remember a time in Fifth grade where I did a really good job on an assignment, and a classmate took the paper and presented it as her own. I definitely feel the burn of “doing the right thing” (in my mind), and then being scrutinized. Guilty until proven innocent.
I could clean that out in other scenarios. In high school, my best friend’s parents constantly accused me of being a horrible influence. Although I probably did provoke rebellion, I was likely one of the best influences in her world, from a parental standpoint anyway.
Why? I want to be seen for who I am. I do not want to prove my innocence. I want to be appreciated for my responsible actions.
This is a universal irritation. Many people in our country feel irritated, invaded by the government, watched, over controlled. (They really should consider Alexa and their cell phones first, but whatever.) Perhaps they are experiencing the same “why”. I can deepen my empathy a bit, try to understand others from my own window of awareness.
Perhaps this isn’t the deepest use of the topic, but I did gain an ounce of self understanding. When I call the insurance representative, I can express my disgust without yelling. Or perhaps, since the person on the phone has nothing to do with corporate policy and procedure (and probably isn’t paid enough to be my counselor), I will just politely provide information, and let it go.
There are bigger fish to fry. There are more quandaries into why.
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