Our society is so interested in the reasons as to ‘why’ we do things – or, more importantly – ‘why’ things happen to us. It is a valid question – but, oftentimes, there is not an answer to the question.

For example…
– Why did this happen to me
– Why is the world so polarized?

You may be able to answer some of these; yet – you cannot answer them without the question ‘What’?

For the first question (why did this happen to me?) – ‘what’ happened and did I play a role in it? You may feel that you are a victim, yet – you have to be honest with yourself and ask if you played a role in what happened. If, you did – flesh out the situation and work on that behavior.

Now. if you had no role in the situation (consider abuse as an example), ask yourself – ‘what can I learn from this?’ – ‘what can I do to never let this happen again?’

If your choices DID impact the outcome – ask yourself ‘what can I do to not make this type of decision again’ – or – ‘what can I learn about myself after this happened?’.

For the second question (why are we so polarized?) – we don’t have any way of controlling this. Yet, rather than asking a question that leaves you feeling powerless, ask ‘what can I do to make a difference?’. To you, it may not be a big impact – but, any impact that you make on a micro scale can snowball if we all make small impacts.

It is not the ‘why’ – it is the ‘what’ that will make the difference!