A Perfect Response

Is there an answer for every Why that’s uttered? Yes, in a word: Because.

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It starts early in life, this obsession with the question of Why. Remember this dialogue?

“Mommy, can I have this?”

“No.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“Because why?”

“Because I said so.” End of discussion. The Voice has spoken.

Frank McCourt, the author, once wrote about his indoctrination into the Catholic church. He said the catechism began something like this:

“In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, the creatures and mankind.”

He remembers agreeing with this much, since he knew he had nothing to do with it and didn’t know anybody who could perform such a trick. But what he didn’t understand was ‘Why’ God did it. Because was the only answer he got.

Life is complicated enough without trying to figure out the ‘why’ of everything. When we embark on that holy grail, we find ourselves in a sea of confusion trying to explain our actions or thoughts.

Country music is full of Why’s. Hank Williams, Jr sang, “Hank, why do you drink, why do you roll smoke, why must you live out the songs that you wrote.” He answers these Why’s best he could: “I’m just carrying on a family tradition.” He could have just said Because, only its simplicity wouldn’t have produced many royalties.

Who can say with certainty why they prefer anything: this person over that one, or this career over another one? Or why we prefer some food and not others. And love, now that’s the great conundrum. Who can say why they love this person and not another one? Because is the best and truest response.

I’m often asked, “Why do you write?” Bukowski the poet answered it for me like this: “I write for myself to save what’s left of myself.”

But neither he nor I really grasped what lay inside us. It’s a pretty good explanation, but Because would have summed it up as well. Why do you do what you do?

Who can deny that our reasons are often illogical, sometimes absurd and mostly leave us wondering why we can’t put our finger on the answer? So much is illusion.

On my office desk is a miniature skeleton, sitting on a box and holding a tiny banjo. Punch a button and it begins to strum Dixie. If one didn’t know better, it would appear he’s actually playing the tune, a sort of legerdemain. But inside the box is a tiny machine that plays the banjo, and not the skeleton. How easily we’re tricked.

Then there’s the fable about the bantam rooster, the barnyard blowhard, who convinced the other chickens that the sun comes up only because of his crowing. The ruse worked well, and even he believed it. But one day he overslept, and the sun rose anyway. So much for illusion and delusion.

Currently occupying a big white house in Washington is a very big rooster. He’s the reigning potentate of the chaotic barnyard and crows a lot with twitter, early and often. The sun comes up with his twitters and seismic events occur. His crowing drowns out most of the lesser cackling among the other barnyard chickens. Big Rooster controls the barnyard dialogue. What if he overslept?

I’m taking this opportunity to crow a little myself. There was a time, a time long ago, when I envisioned myself a runner. I ran several fifty-mile events, more endurance marathons than races. Why did I do such a thing? I asked myself, and so did others. My best answer was Because.

Remember when we were children, riding our broomstick horses, our rocking hobby horses or flying on our witch’s broom? We tricked ourselves. We really carried what we thought carried us.

Humanity won’t cease trying to discover what lies behind the Why’s in life. The philosopher Pascal said, “(t)he heart has reasons which the reason does not know. It’s the heart that feels God, not the reason.”

Someone said we beg, borrow or steal a few rags of reason to understand our Why’s. We get paralyzed in the process; and our actions are muted. And we find ourselves going around in endless circles, coming no closer to the truth than when we began.

If there’s a reason and a reward in life, who can understand Why? Because is the oldest reason, the safest one and the strongest one.

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And you can make a safe bet that tomorrow the sun will rise, no matter who’s crowing. Why? Because.


Bud Hearn
August 2, 2019