On Waking Up — The Attack of the WhyBut Monster

Why and but are stop words. They are use­ful for get­ting us off-track, as we pre­tend to be work­ing on our issues. Utter­ing either means that you are stuck, pure and simple.

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So, here’s a recent question:

Hi Wayne I’d love you to write a post with a bit more detail on how we use ‘why’ to stay asleep. I do get the irony of ask­ing you to explain why we ask why! I used to be very much a why girl until recent­ly. I saw how much need­ing to know why stopped me from tak­ing action. I final­ly realised we don’t have to know to move for­ward. From Jane

Let’s talk about our brain pat­terns. Brains use a ton more body ener­gy than their weight — as com­pared to the rest of the body — so brains devel­oped habits to use less energy.

A habit, a way of being, is an energy conservation device

The prob­lem with habits (habit­u­al pat­terns of think­ing) is that, with­out effort, they are “invis­i­ble.” We might be spend­ing 80% of our day going through the motions, and all of it is habit. 

Which is why Zen is so adamant on “When wash­ing dish­es, wash dish­es.” Such a focus frags us out of auto-pilot — we begin to be present — to pay attenton. 

OK, so next step — thinking

Most humans think that think­ing is real­ly, real­ly spe­cial. Now, sure, our abil­i­ty to self-reflect sep­a­rates us from most oth­er ani­mals, but we have to be care­ful here.

Constructive thought

This is what we were taught to do in school. How to think through a prob­lem — say in math, or sci­ence — we know it as the sci­en­tif­ic method. It involves start­ing where we are, apply­ing rig­or­ous cri­te­ria, and push­ing our­selves to the next level.

Obsessive thought

Here’s where the Why­But mon­ster rears it’s ugly head(s).

Obses­sive thought is re-hash­ing what we’re doing, com­plete with a large dose of self-crit­i­cism, in order to con­serve ener­gy — in oth­er words, to stay stuck. 

Seems counter-intu­itive, but actu­al think­ing is ener­gy-inten­sive. Stay­ing stuck while run­ning a “why­but” tape is like putting a song on end­less loop. Click. Done.

Stay­ing stuck is easy. If you just stand there, knee deep, or deep­er, in the muck, you are expend­ing zero ener­gy after the first “click.”

Get­ting out requires mas­sive ener­gy. Even tak­ing one step — mas­sive ener­gy. Last arti­cle, I list­ed off thought pat­terns for both “why” and “but.”

but, but, but…

In reverse order, “but” has to do with think­ing things through to the point where a next step is obvi­ous, and then rac­ing to the well of excuses.

• “But it’s not the right time.”
• “I know what to do, but I don’t have the energy.”
• “But I can’t act until I know the outcome.”

So, what’s the point?

Stay­ing asleep, safe­ly ensconced in the silken strands of our cocoon, is all about the safe­ty or predictability. 

We don’t act because we fear where we may end up. We fear cat­a­stroph­ic loss — and we fear that where we end up will be ter­ri­ble.

And we judge our­selves for not act­ing, as our egos love the sen­sa­tion of pow­er­less­ness and frustration. 

Yet, the ego’s fear of change (and it’s use of men­tal scare tac­tics) is not based in fact. That said, the fear is “real.” Vis­cer­al. Until we get a hold of our­selves and give our­selves a shake. 

It boils down to the simple truth that what we imagine and what is real is never the same. 

Real is right in front of us, and imag­i­na­tion is fil­tered through our fears (or desires.) 

“But,” you say, “you can’t be too pre­pared.” And I agree, so long as you are prepar­ing, as opposed to fan­ta­siz­ing about prepar­ing. Oth­er­wise known as scar­ing your­self. Any­thing that gets in the way of doing is an issue.

Why-ning

I just coined that word, as that’s what it sounds like. The oth­er illus­tra­tion from last week is the “why” pat­tern. This one is less about mak­ing excus­es than it is about delay­ing act­ing, prefer­ably forever.

I had many clients who were expert why-ners. They could teach Col­lege lev­el classes. 

When pressed, they’ll come out with, “Until I know why, I can’t change things.” Which begs the tongue-in-cheek response, “Why not?” 

Ask­ing “why” has all the trap­pings of the sci­en­tif­ic method. Except for the miss­ing part — doing some­thing. And we’re right back to the cocoon — safe­ly wrapped up, going nowhere.

So, why is asleep so popular?

It’s every­where. Con­sumerism is built upon it. Dis-sat­is­fac­tion sells us prod­ucts — we feel bad, we think we’re stuck… and an ad tells us we’ll be oh-so stim­u­lat­ed by a new car, be able to do any­thing with the the right tam­pon, that all our tomor­rows will be per­fect after a change in government. 

Sad­ly, “it” nev­er helps for long, because all we’re doing is shift­ing exter­nals. How easy for the the adver­tis­er: “Do the min­i­mum to change some­thing exter­nal to your­self, feel bet­ter for a bit, line our pock­ets, and we promise to sug­gest some­thing new next week!”

We confuse acting randomly, or out of desire (“I’m sure that finding a new husband will do it for me… this time!”) with taking responsibility for acting in ways that match our sense of self.

Remem­ber: ask­ing why, or sit­ting on your buts, is what we’ve been taught to do. It pass­es for progress, for mak­ing an effort — we think, we assume we can live by fig­ur­ing things out. And yet, with­out actu­al­ly doing some­thing, you’re stuck in your head, going around in circles.

The only way out is action.

A “but” friend lists off 10 things she could do dif­fer­ent­ly, and then says, “… but I’m too tired to act!” 

She knows! It’s right there. Do some­thing dif­fer­ent. Get off her butt, and her buts. 

A “why” friend is fever­ish­ly run­ning all over the world, look­ing for the right place, and Mr. Right. Spend­ing mon­ey, tak­ing cours­es, and think­ing that if only she moves phys­i­cal­ly, some­how her iner­tia will be over­come, and “…things will start happening.” 

She miss­es that her men­tal gym­nas­tics are depriv­ing her of actu­al expe­ri­ence. And mov­ing (loca­tion­al enlight­en­ment) changes noth­ing — 6 weeks lat­er, her bag­gage will arrive, and she’ll sim­ply be stuck in a new location. 

Run­ning away, you see, is not the same as actu­al­ly doing some­thing. It’s sad. She too knows what she needs to do. And she stops her­self with end­less ques­tions. Doubts, uncertainties.

Waking Up

Wak­ing up requires unfold­ing action. Wak­ing up is about see­ing clear­ly what is “right here,” and choos­ing to imme­di­ate­ly act in response, which flies in the face of our world’s mon­u­men­tal attrac­tion to inertia.

“In the coun­try of the blind, the one eyed-man is king” — Erasmus

Even a lit­tle action (like one eye) sets one apart from those who do not see — the asleep — those liv­ing on auto-pilot. 

It does no good to try to explain any of this to those who choose auto-pilot. Wak­ing up requires one thing — rec­og­niz­ing that there is no “right path,” no “right des­ti­na­tion.” No, we are not here to ful­fill our des­tiny, to accom­plish some “fixed some­thing.” We’re here to be alive.

To live

The more ful­ly alive we are, the more we see and hear, and the more pos­si­bil­i­ties open up in front of us. 

Most refuse to believe this, and refuse to exper­i­ment by liv­ing differently.

I once said to a friend, “Here you are, stand­ing at the ban­quet of life, and all you ever eat is gar­ban­zo beans.” (She tend­ed, despite a myr­i­ad of oppor­tu­ni­ties, to sing the same, sad song, and refuse to change her actions.) Gar­ban­zos, with a ban­quet sur­round­ing her.

Living is savouring, tasting, experimenting, opening. And, when necessary, fighting.

In this pool of active liv­ing, what to do next is clear. You’ll know it, as clear as day. 

Here’s what to resist: imme­di­ate­ly ask­ing “why,” try­ing to fig­ure the rest of your life out, or “but-ing” your­self into submission.

It’s a hard sell, suggesting that the only thing we need to do is the next thing

There is no grand plan, and actions are always one-at-a-time. 

Life’s like that — exam­ple: despite hav­ing my name on sev­er­al books, I’ve nev­er writ­ten a book. I’ve writ­ten words, sen­tences, chap­ters, over time, and all of that even­tu­al­ly coa­lesced into a book. It would nev­er have evolved into a book with­out slow, steady action. 

Or, it’s like this arti­cle. 1 hour in, I’m almost done. I had no idea, oth­er than the Why­But top­ic, where I was going, or where I’d end up. I wrote it any­way, word by word, moment by moment. 

This is the key — to do what you choose to do, right now. If you are sit­ting there, stuck, do some­thing. Get up, wig­gle your­self, go inter­act with the world. Paint. Write. Walk. Run. Wash dishes. 

And your life will come into being, as you enact it, moment by awake moment… Bet­ter than being eat­en by the Why­But monster.

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