Originally published by Clifton Courier, April 3, 2019

Sometimes, you need to ask yourself the big questions.

And that big question is always a derivative of “Why?”.

Way back in the day when I was a goon-soaked journalism student, we were taught the basic building blocks of a story. We were given the five Ws (and the one H) to answer to keep our stories from being nonsensical dribble. You had the “Who?” your “What?” the “When?” and “Where?” and, most importantly, there was the “Why?” You also had to squeeze a cheeky “How?” in there too, but “how” doesn’t conform to the handy alliteration that we journos love so much, so it’s not given the same reverence. Despite my insistence on regularly destroying my brain cells, I eventually learned that the Why? was always the meatiest question. And, more often than not, it’s the juiciest part of entire story.

If you keep asking “Why?” like an annoying seven-year-old, you eventually boil away the bullhonkey and get to the real spice of what’s happening.

“Why?” is a powerful question.

I recently read about a great goal-setting strategy where you ask yourself five “Why?”s to suss out what’s really driving your desire to achieve whatever task you’re wanting to accomplish.

And I think this badgering method should be applied not just to council meeting reports or evaluating of your ambition create a cloak made entirely out of human hair (although, there’d be a few other questions you’d want to ask yourself if you had that goal on your vision board).

Being an introspective/extremely self-absorbed kinda gal, I decided to turn this method into a way to analyse my behaviour so I learn more about the type of person I am. Because learning more about myself is what I like to do for fun. I guess it’s a hobby. Some people climb mountains, others teach themselves to play the guitar; I sit in silence and think about myself.

But my personal “Why?” question usually comes in the form of “Why am I like this?”

It’s a question I would ask myself on average 2.7 times per day. And it’s usually more of a rhetorical thing.

But actually answering yourself can be enlightening.

For example, asking myself why I was feeling a little bit dusty the other morning led to a few revelations. This splintered off into two lines of enquiry, one related to the consumption of wine the night before. I had three to four glasses at the most, but was feeling rubbish the next day. Why? Because my body can’t bounce back from abuse the way it used to. Why? Because I’m getting older. Why? Because time marches on with a callous continuity and it stops for no one.

Cool, right?

The other line of thinking was related to my poor sleep. Why did I sleep so poorly? Because I was having nightmares about having too many leftovers and I kept getting so stressed in my sleep, I kept having to wake myself up to calm myself down. Why? Well I obviously have some problems with stress that I need to address before my frettings manifest as blood clots.

See? It’s a fun game!

It can help you rationalise behaviour that, to an outsider, probably doesn’t make much sense.

For example, if an outsider saw someone standing in the kitchen wearing an old t-shirt and no pants while eating cold stuffing out of the arse end of a chook, they might see a broken, irrational person. But by asking yourself “Why am I doing this?” you’ll know your behaviour makes total sense. Why are you eating just the stuffing? Because your body needed fuel after a long day and the brown rice and nut combo of the homemade stuffing was a nutritious choice. Why aren’t you wearing pants? Because you wanted to keep your work clothes stain-free and the oversized shirt was the fastest outfit change option available. Why are you spooning the stuffing straight out of the carcass, treating a hollow, dead chicken like an ice cream tub? Because you didn’t want to cause more washing up by using a plate.

I mean, this is all strictly hypothetical, of course, but it helps you to find logic in your behaviour.

So next time you find yourself asking “why am I like this?”, maybe try to answer yourself. Even if it’s not your idea of fun, at least it’ll be interesting.