Halfway through reading Wolf at the Table, there is a scene where someone is asking another person to just tell them why they did something.  They just “want the truth”.

Similarly, I recently requested to schedule time with someone and I want them to tell me why something is happening in our relationship. 

I tell myself that I want to understand if there is something I did to cause a behavior or dynamic, so I could possibly do it differently to produce a better outcome.  I could then base my decision to continue the relationship or not on the answer.

But as I hear the character in the book asking this question, I want to tell her to not ask.  I want to advise her and rewrite this chapter.  Because it doesn’t matter what the other person says. It never does.  Not in real life or the book.

Some broken or strengthened part of each of us, as a result of every moment up to that action, causes us to do things we cant even explain to ourselves.

What is actually funny is that the person I have requested to speak to actually wrote a book about his own life and in it he describes a moment when someone was asking him the very same thing – WHY?

Why are we where we are? How did this happen to us?

I don’t think I want to know why anymore.  If the meeting happens, it will go very differently than I intended initially.

And I want to tell the fictional woman in the book to just get up from the table before he can answer and say, “You know what, it doesn’t matter why – its done”

Thinking over all the things that I have done in life and the effect it had on others, and the impact my words and actions may have had on various folks, I can’t really tell you why I did each of those things – I could only guess.  So what is the point?

If someone handed you a guide or formula on all the outcomes of each choice you have to make – what would we do next? Would we just be paralyzed in a pondering state?  Would we have to plan out all the results on a scale and decide who and what we care about most?

I’m too old for this.  My life is definitely half-over and it seems to have gone very quickly.

I definitely did not appreciate a million things I had overtime that are gone now and I can’t have them back.  And that is ok too.

No one deserves to be an ingredient in an exercise for someone else to work through their own demons, unless you need it too. And I don’t think I do.

In other words – you have a choice to make and so do I, as to what your character will do next in your own story. You’re the author and you’re holding the pen.