Mara disguised: Always looking for answers

According to my dad, when I was little I used to ask "why." Alot. I was one of those pesky toddlers who was always like, "why, why, why?" I wanted to know the answer to things like "why is the sky blue?"

I don't really know why I always asked why, except that obviously the answer was very important to my young fresh eyes. (And why is the sky blue anyway? Does anyone know?)

Anyway.

I've realized that I never completely lost that habit and even into adulthood I find myself asking why quite often. These why's are not always verbalized as they were when I was a child, but they are often swirling around my head like insects to a flame, searching for answers.

I am a naturally curious person, probably the reason why my career goal in college was to be a reporter and why I worked as a reporter for three years at the beginning of my career. The biggest part of my job was asking why. If you failed to ask a "why," you might miss a big story. (One time I followed a teenager into the woods looking for homeless people. I also knocked on doors in crappy neighborhoods and got chased to my car by a pitbull...all for a story. And those are just a couple tidbits)

Something happened just last weekend that caused me to get stuck on why. It didn't matter the fact that what happened was really a good thing, it was meant to be, it needed to happen. And the why wasn't going to change anything about the outcome. But I still couldn't get past was the why.

In the confines of my worried mind I must have come up with five fictional, sometimes fantastical, and a couple even a little paranoid stories on why exactly this thing happened. Although I have moved on, I still found myself just this morning wondering why. Then something else crazy happened today at work that caused me to scream WHY? at the universe.

The problem is that sometimes answers don't want to be found, and that's when the why's turn into anxiety -- secretly masquerading as Mara. That's when we get a case of the why's in the wee hours of the morning.

The fact is -- a fact I personally have a hard time with --- is that sometimes the why doesn't matter.

Sometimes there isn't a definitive why.

Sometimes it's better not to know why.

Sometimes the universe, or God, or Whomever, keeps the why from us until we need to know it.

Today, I release the why to Mara, accepting that there is no answer. You should try it. Peace.