No Reason

I don't have a reason for everything I do.  I don't want to have reasons for all that I do, either.  To me, it's very important to be able to do things just because I want to, as long as they don't hurt anyone else.  One of the questions that most perplexes me sometimes is "Why did you do that?"  My answer usually is that I didn't know I had to have a reason.  I often wear two different colors of shoelaces, and many people have a difficult time with that--they want to know why I do that.  The truth is that I don't really have a reason.  I like colors, and white shoelaces on running shoes simply bore me, so I just change the laces.

Of course, there are those who will say, "That's your reason--because you like them, and you don't like the white shoelaces," but I don't think that's accurate.  I think that we're so caught up in being able to explain things that we don't allow ourselves the "Because that's the way it is" answer any more.  So much of life is inexplicable, though, and I see that as a good thing--it's more fulfilling to me to accept some things without needing an explanation for it.  It liberates me and makes me feel much less tied to things like explanations for other people's actions and likes and dislikes.

Children are the unfortunate recipients of much of our need for explanations.  "Why did you do that?" we ask, and then we get upset when the child doesn't have an explanation ready for us.  But maybe he just did it without thinking of reasons--it's a new experience and new learning, and it could even have been fascinating and fun.  Maybe something got broken along the way, but those things do happen, don't they?

Today I'm going to do a few things for no reason.  Tomorrow, too.  Perhaps someone will ask me why I did it, and I'll just say, "No reason."  Because the bottom line is that if we have to explain every single thing that we do in life, we tend to lose the ability to be spontaneous, to live our lives in ways that don't need tons of explaining to every person who wants an explanation.  We can simply be and simply do, and that really is not just acceptable, but in many ways preferable.