The Importance of Why!

What animates, what motivates, what drives, what propels? What keeps one’s nose to the grindstone? What compels one to go to war? What keeps a soul buoyed in the face of a hopeless present and an even darker future? What is the underlying reason people do what they do, say what they say, and act the way they act?

Motive matters. The why of something matters, and if we are too indifferent, lazy, or distracted to figure out motive, we will often find ourselves in untenable positions having gone along to get along until it was too late.

I’ve been married long enough to know when something is off with my wife. Those of you who’ve been married for a spell know exactly what I am talking about. Nothing needs be said; nothing needs be verbalized, there is no overly dramatic intake of breath, clutching of imaginary pearls, or rolling of the eyes, yet you know that something is just not right.

Most of the time, if I am the cause of her distress, it will be something that didn’t even register with me, yet in her eyes was an offense worthy of the gallows. I’ve had discussions with enough married men on the subject to know that I am not the only one to have gone through the mental Rolodex of what I could have possibly done to warrant the cold shoulder, only to find out it was something as innocuous as not having picked up my socks off the floor.

That said, I make it a point to find out the why of a given situation regularly, because more often than not it’s not about me, but about something at work, or a sick relative, or something wholly unrelated to our family dynamic. Had I not inquired the reason for her distress, I would have lived with the assumption that I’d done something I was not aware of having done, and since I was unaware of having committed an infraction, it was just an exaggeration on her part.

That’s how cycles of bitterness begin in one’s heart. A spouse, a parent, a child, or a friend seems upset, we assume they are upset at us, we conclude we’ve done nothing that would warrant their being upset, and we begin to resent them because we feel as though we’ve been treated unfairly.

Whatever the situation, whatever the circumstance, whatever the morsel of breaking news might be, take a second before reacting and pinpoint the motivation behind it. Reverse engineer the situation until you come to the point of discovering why something is taking place.

When you get to motive when you get to why, you will have discovered the intent of it, and once that is discovered, you will have a complete picture of all that is taking place.

The reason everyone from politicians to internet platforms, to multinational companies, to news outlets are scrambling, trying to shut off the spigot of information is because people are beginning to drill down to the intent and motive of the propaganda that they are being force-fed, and realizing the maliciousness of it. For lack of a better term, people are waking up, and that is something the cultural puppeteers desperately want to avoid. 

With love in Christ,

Michael Boldea Jr.