One time every 14.4 minutes. What do you think we do this often? Honestly, I wouldn’t even be able to answer this question (hint, hint) if you asked me, and the only reason I know this fact is because I looked it up for the blog. The answer is, well, to ask a question. You might be thinking, “There’s no way I ask questions this much.” And you’d be right—you don’t. But children do: about 100 – 200 times per day to be exact. And arguably, one of the most common questions children ask is actually pretty simple: why? 

“Why do I have to wear my coat?” 

“Why can’t we pet the skunk?”

“Why can’t we let a pony live in the house?”

“Why do you have red dots on your head?”

(That last one was real by the way, cordially asked by one of the boys I babysat for last summer. I don’t know kid, it’s probably just a pimple). Anyway, the answers to the seemingly never ending “why” questions from kids are usually fairly obvious to us. Let’s take the skunk question, for example. 

“Why can’t we pet the skunk?”

“Well, it will probably spray you with its stink, and you’ll smell really bad for a while.”

But with kids, it often doesn’t end there.

“But why will it spray me? I’m nice!” 

Okay. Let’s humor them.

“Skunks spray people when they’re scared, and they’ll probably be scared of you because they don’t get much human interaction even though you’re nice.”

Alright, you already know what’s coming next. C’mon, they’re just a kid.

“But why will I stink if they spray me?”

“You’ll smell bad because the skunk’s spray has something in it called sulfur, which is really strong and usually smells like rotten eggs.”

“But why does sulfur smell bad?” 

Don’t freak out people, I took organic chemistry. I got this.

“Most sulfur compounds are thiols, or compounds with a sulfur bonded to a hydrogen, which generally have a bad smell.” 

For the love of everything good and holy, I’d hope the kid would stop here because I don’t have any more answers off the top of my head. I guess I killed the cat though, because I was actually curious about this, so I looked it up. Turns out, thiols are actually a byproduct of some decomposing amino acids, like cysteine and methionine. Hopefully you’re getting your weekly dose of science you didn’t know about, considering the flatworms from last week. But back to what I’m really trying to illustrate: why is knowing why so important?

Asking questions gives us an answer, a why, a cause, a purpose. If we would have stopped at the simple because you’d smell really bad for a while, we wouldn’t necessarily be wrong, but we also never would have learned that the real reason for this is because thiols are a byproduct of decomposition. You can sort of use the same rationale in thinking about the reasons for doing the work that you do, especially in the non-profit sector.

 This week, Dr. Mark Lomax II from the Columbus Foundation spoke to the summer interns about our own “why.” It should drive your passion, be your backbone, evoke emotion. It should be the thing that you always come back to when you get lost in the day to day monotony. And, people are much more drawn to you when you continually place your “why” at the forefront of your work. The key is, though, that you can’t stop at one “why.” There have to be five. Five “whys” to understanding the real, true, most concealed intentions behind your actions. So, as an ode to Dr. Lomax, or maybe as an ode to myself, here are my five “whys.”

The first part is simply a goal: to help children learn about positive ways to cope with and understand their grief and trauma so that the weight of those experiences does not hold them back moving forward. 

Okay, here we go. The first why.

Because I’ve had my own experience with grief when my sister passed, and I hate the feeling I get when people look at you with pity, or don’t even look at you at all. Sometimes they even think you’re too traumatized to do anything meaningful or be a good leader.

That’s deep. But Dr. Lomax said don’t stop there, so it’s time for another one. Why?

People don’t like to acknowledge that a bad thing has happened to you because they’re scared. Scared it will make them face their own fragile existence, and scared to lean into the feelings they get when they think about yours. And, from my personal experience, I’ve learned that people tend to look down on those who’ve experienced adversity that has caused residual effects, like depression or a lack of motivation.

We’re not done yet— here’s the third why. 

Remember when I wrote about fear of the unknown? Yeah, that one always comes back around. Death, grief, and trauma are completely unknown to people that haven’t experienced them. And, when you’ve never experienced something, you’re more likely to be fearful of it. Not only that, but not many people want to spend their spare time thinking about death and loss because, quite frankly, it’s just sad.

Now is when it starts to get a little more challenging. Why?

Well, death and loss are subjects that tend to hit people right in the gut. If you hear of someone who lost their sister, you might think to yourself, “Wow, what would I feel like if I lost my sister?” And usually, you don’t feel too good. But that’s the reality of people who have experienced loss, and they live that reality every day. So, even if you’ve never experienced it, the least you can do is try to put yourself in their shoes (though they might be dirty, grimy shoes with mud caked in the bottom, but that’s grief). 

Well, folks, we’ve made it to The Final Why. I could probably write a book about this, but fortunately for you, I’m running out of room, and this is just a blog. So, I’m just going to answer this last question: Why don’t people feel too good when your sad reality forces them to confront feelings they might have about their own?

I guess I’ll start by stating a fact, which is that everyone dies, whether you’re talking about yourself or a loved one. Ah yes, loved one. It’s a term that’s thrown around loosely, but have you ever stopped to think about what it really means? You love this person, and that’s what makes it so hard to grieve them when they die. Love seems simple, but turns infinitely complicated during grief, the best definition for which I’ve ever heard is that it is love with nowhere to go, because the person it was meant for is gone. I might seem like I’m going down a rabbit hole here, but I promise, I’m not. I’m finding a way to express the love I had for my sister in this internship. By caring for kids who I know have come from homes that are terribly difficult to imagine, or have witnessed trauma so severe that it’s impacted their day to day behavior. And that is my ultimate why I suppose: it’s love.