By: Lisa Arrington | Published November 2022
Since the dawn of time, man has wondered the ways of the world. We ask questions about life, ourselves, and the universe. We’ve spent thousands of years in modern history attempting to reverse engineer how the world works and answer the question: Why is it this way? This short story tells this tale and makes us ask another question: Is our attempt to find the answer lost in redundancy?
Imagine, for a moment, you’re sitting around a campfire. It’s tribal times. You watch from your view by the campfire as your fellow members of the tribe dance, feast, and socialize in celebration. Others are sitting near you in the circle around the campfire. Some people have taken to the campfire to rest their legs and enjoy its warmth. Some people are sitting quietly and staring off into the flames. They are deep in thought as if they’re mesmerized by the rhythmic movement of the blaze. You notice a child, who’s old enough to hold his own, but still very green about the ways of the world. He is close enough to where you are sitting that you can see the campfire flames dancing in the reflection of the young boy’s eyes. He has a perplexed look on his face, like he’s desperately trying to make sense of something in his mind. The young boy leans over to an elder tribesman sitting next to him and asks, “Why are things done this way?”
The question the boy posed may had been to ask why the tribe’s rituals are orchestrated the way the boy had grown to see. Or to ask why the tribe’s houses are constructed in a certain way, why their society holds their spiritual beliefs in such high regard, or why social expectations had come to be how they are now. Whatever the intention for his question is, the elder’s answer would be the same:
“Because, it’s always been that way,” the old man says to the child.
He does not say, “because we’ve always done it that way,” as to imply that the answer has to do with the actions of his people. His answer is void of any human influence. The elder knows that the child is eager for exciting details of life, wanting to know every in and out to explain why something is the way it is. To the child, the idea of his question is new and fresh. To the elder, he knows that he does possess the knowledge and could share a story would grant the child new wisdom, but he has already walked the journey. He keeps his answer to the child direct and to the point. However simple his one-sentence reply may be, it doesn’t deprive the child of the inherit wisdom of the statement. The wisdom is embedded within the old man’s answer. It contains the truth, knowledge, and answers the child was seeking. But this answer won’t fulfill the child.
So, the child leaves the campfire that night in his pursuit. He goes on to explore the bounds and limits of his question, endlessly pursing the answer from every angle. He delves into the science of the matter, learning of chemical reactions and elements. He dabbles in physics and metaphysics, understanding how concepts like energy and gravity play a role. He ponders the mentality of the question itself, wondering if the morality of his choice of question was juxtaposed. He grows an emotional attachment to his question, which has grown sentimental to him along the way. He may even begin to identify his Self with his question, making it his life’s mission to deconstruct the ways of science, religion, spirituality, society, psychology, and all the other aspects he must explore to find his truth.
Eventually, the boy has investigated every dimension of his question. He’s asked countless other questions about each area, stemming off of his original query, “Why are things this way?” Every time he found an answer to one question, a set of new possibilities, new modalities, and new perspectives was revealed, and would yield a whole new set of questions for him to answer. After many decades of this, he concludes that the old man’s answer was correct:
Because it is that way.
In his pursuit of finding the answer, he has now passed middle age. He’s not quite an old man, but he is far from his prime. He is considered to be an elder by the younger tribespeople. One night, the now adult man attends a celebratory gathering. He watches as the people of his community eat, dance, and socialize. A young child wanders over to where the man is sitting, alone. With true childlike wonder, he asks the man, “Why are things the way they are?”
The man could spend hours providing a series of correlated inquiry to explain his answer. He could lecture the child on the periodic table of elements to explain how the clay in their village is best mended. He could discuss the socioeconomics of the tribe, or take it back to the basics of survival and how their ways are most efficient to keep them all safe. He has countless tales to share that would excite the child and spark their sense of wonder.
But instead, he takes a moment to reflect. Giving that moment to himself. Creating space for his spirit and all those he’s interconnected with in his life’s experiences. There is no way he can sum all this up into one answer or explain it in one way, because the answer is truly multidimensional. He ends his pause to respond the child with:
“Because, this is what always has been.”
His answer is the same as the old man’s but given with a new perspective in slightly different words. Of course, this doesn’t satisfy the child. The child assumes the old man is ignorant of the wonderous things that are out there and the secrets the universe holds. He assumes he knows better than the senile man. After all, he is faster, nimbler, and in his prime. So, the child would set out to find his answer. He spends his life exploring the same modalities, methods, and approaches as his ancestors before him, endlessly seeking to solve the world’s mysteries. At the end of his journey, he too will conclude the same answer:
Because it is.
The universe simply is. Humans aren’t discovering anything new. We are simply finding new ways to discover what is. New modalities to express it in. New dimensions of it and different perspectives to consider it from. It’s why trying to answer questions of, “What is reality?” using methods of science, psychics, language, math, and other means only end up being redundant. Because all they do is explain what already is. The answer isn’t new. It’s not a breakthrough, because the answer has always existed. We’re just using a new means of the universe to describe that very thing (the universe); a new expression of what has always been.
Humans will continue spending generation after generation to reveal life’s mysteries, unaware that we’ve answered these questions countless times in countless ways before. Perhaps it’s less a matter of needing to find the answer as a species, and more about the individual’s need to make sense of the world for themselves through their journey. The mission to answer the universe’s questions of consciousness and reality are no more than methods to discover oneself.
After all, humans are the universe. We exhibit the same patterns and cycles as the universe we aim to understand. It’s like trying to define the concept of, “reality,” and using the word “reality” within in the definition. We are using modalities of the thing we are trying to define within our answer, so the answer will contain some level of redundancy. So, the real inquiry we should ponder is:
Does this question really need to be answered in the first place?
