I need the why
Nathan Chadwick · · 7 min read
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- I do not understand a thing until I have the why. That is not only about people leaving. It is how I take in anything that asks me to understand it.
- Good and bad are labels until I know why something is one or the other. Without the reason I am repeating a verdict I do not hold.
- Knowledge and information are not the same. A fact with no why is a loose piece. I can repeat it. I cannot use it, and I cannot trust it.
- When people leave and take the why with them, the same hole opens. I ruminate because the case was never given the facts.
- I am not asking for a speech. I am asking for the reason, said plainly, so I can stop inventing one.
I need the why#
If I do not have the why, I do not understand. Not later. Not "with time". Not at all.
People hear that and think I mean when someone leaves. I do mean that. I do not only mean that. I mean anything that requires the why. A judgement of good or bad. A piece of knowledge. A fact I am handed. A decision I am supposed to stand behind. A person walking out of the story. If the thing asks me to understand it, the reason is the door. Without the reason I am in a room with no door, walking the same square of floor and calling it processing.
This is not a preference I can turn off when it is inconvenient. It is how my mind works. Give me the why and I can hold the thing, even if I hate it. Withhold it and I will build a version, and I will live with that version until the real one shows up.
Good and bad#
Tell me something is good. Tell me something is bad. If you stop there, I have a label and no understanding.
I can repeat the label. I can even act as if I agree. That is not the same as knowing. Good and bad are conclusions. The why is how you got there. If I do not have that, I am borrowing a verdict and hoping it fits.
A thing can look good and be rotten once you know why it was done. A thing can look bad and be the least bad option there was. I cannot tell those apart from the surface. I need why it is good, or why it is bad, in this case. Otherwise I am guessing, and a guessed moral is just confidence with nothing under it.
I am not asking for a sermon every time someone has an opinion. I am saying that if you want me to understand the judgement, not just nod at it, I need the why. "Because it is" is not a why. "Because I said so" is not a why. Those close the conversation. They do not finish the thought.
Knowledge and information#
Information is not knowledge. I can be handed a fact and still not know anything.
A number. A name. A headline. A rule. A line someone is sure of. That is information. It sits there. Knowledge is what I have once I know why the fact is true, why it matters, and what it does not cover. Until then it is a loose piece. I can quote it. I cannot use it. And some part of me does not trust it, because I have not seen what holds it up.
This is the same hole. An unexplained fact is an open file. I will turn it over. I will try to supply the missing reason myself. Sometimes I get close. Often I invent a why that makes the information feel finished, and then I am walking around with a story I made, calling it knowledge.
I would rather have a smaller fact with the reason attached than a pile of information with the why stripped off. The pile looks like knowing. It is not.
Anything that requires the why#
If a thing only needs me to follow it, I can follow it. A step. A setting. A sequence. Do this, then this. I do not need the philosophy of a checklist to tick the box.
The moment the thing requires understanding, the checklist is not enough. A decision I am supposed to own. A change I am supposed to accept. A claim I am supposed to believe. A boundary I am supposed to keep. Those require the why. Without it I am complying, or I am in pretence, and neither of those is understanding.
Pretence is what I do when the why is missing and I am expected to carry on anyway. I can perform the agreement. I cannot close the question. The question stays open because it was never answered.
If it requires understanding, it requires the why. People are the loud version. They are not the only version.
When people leave#
The sharpest version is still someone leaving.
Not the argument I can see. Not the slow fade. The exit with no sentence on it. One day they are in the story. The next day they are not, and the only information I have is the absence.
People think that is cleaner. Rip it off. Don't explain, because an explanation would hurt more. For me it is the opposite. An unexplained leaving does not end. My brain treats an unexplained event as an unsolved problem. Unsolved problems do not get filed. They get rehearsed.
I go back over the last conversation. The message I should not have sent. The look I might have misread. The week before. The year before. I interview myself as the witness and the accused. I find a culprit, throw it out, and find another. None of them are the why. They are guesses wearing the why's clothes.
I will do this for a very long time. Not because I enjoy it. Because the file is still open.
I have written before that I wished someone had just left, instead of hiding me and calling it love. I still mean that. A clean exit is kinder than a long pretence. An exit with no why is not clean. It is a locked door. I am still standing on my side of it.
People leaving is one part of this, not the whole of it. It hurts more because the missing why is a person, and the person is gone. The mechanism is the same one I use on a judgement, a fact, or a decision I was told to live with.
Rumination is not understanding#
I know the difference between feeling something and handling it. I wrote about that in feeling more is not emotional intelligence. Rumination is the part that pretends to be handling and is actually just feeling, on a loop.
Susan Nolen-Hoeksema's work is blunt about what the loop does. It keeps the low mood going. It wrecks problem solving. It feels like depth. It is repetition. Knowing that does not hand me the missing fact. The loop is what my mind does when the explanation is absent.
The why is not a request to be soothed. It is the fact that lets the loop stop having a job. Once I have the real reason, I can disagree with it, grieve it, or accept it. I can put it down. A guessed reason cannot be put down, because some part of me knows it might be wrong, so it keeps checking.
That is what I mean by forever. Forever is not a threat. It is what an open loop feels like from the inside.
What I am actually asking for#
I am not asking for an essay. I am not asking you to stay. I am not asking you to sand a rough truth until it is polite.
I am asking for the reason.
If you are telling me something is good, or bad, or true, say why. One plain sentence is enough. The reason is the part I can hold. "Because it just is" leaves me with the label and none of the understanding.
If you are leaving, say why you are leaving.
"I left because I stopped wanting this."
"I left because I was already gone."
"I left because I could not do what you needed."
"I left because I did not want to look at what I did."
Any of those I can work with. I might hate it for a while. I will understand. Understanding is the thing that stops the 2am auditions.
What I cannot work with is "it's not you", "you wouldn't understand", "I don't want to hurt you", and then nothing. Those are not reasons. They are a note on a locked door saying the key would upset me. I would rather be upset by the truth than haunted by the gap.
The same ask covers the rest. If the thing requires the why, give me the why. Not a speech. The reason.
This is not only partners#
A friend who goes quiet. A job that ends in a sentence that explains nothing. Someone in the family who withdraws and calls it "just how I am". A rule with no reason behind it. A fact passed on with the footing cut off. Anyone, or anything, that asks me to understand and keeps the why.
If you are in my life and you are about to leave it, tell me why. Say it once. Say it plainly. Skip the performance. I can take a hard why. I cannot take no why.
If you already left, and you are reading this later: the silence did not protect me. It kept me in the room. The why would have let me leave it too.
And if you are not leaving at all, if you are only trying to tell me what is good, what is bad, or what is true: the silence on the why does the same job. It leaves the file open. I will fill it. Most of what I fill it with will be wrong.