Why me? Why don’t I ever earn enough? Why does it always have to be like this?

Ever found yourself asking these questions?

Since childhood we have asked a lot of these ‘why’ questions; Why do I have to go to bed now? Why must I clean my room? Why is the sea blue? Why did grandma die?

You might say that some of these questions don’t have an answer. Truth is they probably do, but we either a) just don’t know what the answer is yet or, b) looking for the answer means delving deep inside ourselves and, well, that’s uncomfortable.

If our question is scientific then our reasoning usually follows along the ‘a)’ type. If it’s a personal question – yeah, you guessed it – it’s a ‘b)’ type.

The strange thing though is that when we ask ourselves an ‘a)’ type question then this will often set us off on a voyage of discovery – even if it’s just a Google search! However, when we ask ourselves a ‘b)’ type we often go on a destructive path of self-pity with answers to ourselves such as ‘cause you’re not clever/attractive/wealthy enough’!

Why do we do that?

I’m no psychoanalyst but I’m prepared to bet it’s because we don’t want to look any deeper and so a nice dollop of self-blame gets us off the hook from taking a journey into ourselves. I mean we don’t ask the ‘a)’ type questions and come up with a lot of self-blame, do we?

Which road do you want to be on?

I would suggest the next time you find yourself asking ‘Why didn’t I get that promotion/job/girl’ etc., take a quick step back to see which route you’re on. Is it the path of self-pity? If it is, then, just this time, you know, just for the fun of it, try out the journey of discovery – you never know, you just might find yourself an answer!

What ‘why’ questions do you find yourself asking? And what discoveries have you made?