Because I said so

Why? Because I said so! But, why — you know the all too familiar exchange that takes place between an inquisitive child and an adult.

After a certain point that interrogation becomes annoying.

Well, my co-workers and I got into a conversation about mediocrity and redundancy.

There comes a point in time in life when the question becomes about staying the course or venturing into the unknown. The idea of staying in one place after reaching a plateau gives way to the redundancy that can perpetuate mediocrity.

If an area in your life is not driving you to be better, then why continue on the same path?

Questioning the position of your own desires and the state of your passion allows for dreams to take shape. Taking an inventory of past decisions and consequences permits the conscience to contemplate the position of one’s being.

We are taught to go to school, get an education and attain the dream job.

But those adults never tell you why the job and the income to pay for the house is so important. They end it with “because that’s what it is” or “because that’s what adults do.” We are taught to become the single fish in the school merrily going with the flow until we die.

They haven’t addressed the inquisitive state that once thrived during childhood.

Why question the way things are?

For eons, scholars, philosophers, teachers and the like have tried to solve the “why” equation, the perpetual unknown of the universe. Des Cartes, one my favorites, said “Cognito ergo sum,” “I think therefore I am.” The statement derived from his relentless attempt to answer the “why?”

Essentially saying because it is!

I cannot believe that is all there is.

I refuse to believe the whole point of this journey of life is a mundane existence. I have seen people come and go merely biding time until death. They settle. They are spoon-fed the answers and take the policies that govern their days without complaints.

But they are the ones that seem content while others torment themselves with a feeling of some abstract injustice.

“That’s it? It can’t be!” They are wrong for questioning God, country and fellow humans. The monotonous attitudes and livelihoods do not sit well with them.

My coworkers, others and I will not just accept it for what it is. We are not content to just bask in the shadows of mediocrity.

“To be or not to be: that is the question.” Shakespeare posed this statement in Hamlet.

Why just merely exist? Is that not the same as being dead — but being dead in the sense that you no longer desire to dream?

This is life: to be tortured with the question of why we should or shouldn’t do things, why some people suffer and some do not.

I will never use the word “content.”

I desire more, no matter where I am in life.

Shouldn’t you strive to be the best, to push beyond the fathomable boundaries, to be revered as supernatural or immortal? Shakespeare, Des Cartes and others forever remain in the school of social thought because they pushed the envelope.

It is to live that we may experience the myriad of emotions that humans were designed to experience. And if we are in fact fashioned after God, then did this entity not create us with the full knowledge that we may also yearn for a deeper understanding of our paths and journeys.

All we ever hear is the one liner from Shakespeare but read deeper. He, too, longed for the answers:

“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them? To die: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The heart-ache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to, ’tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wish’d. To die, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub;
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause: there’s the respect
That makes calamity of so long life;”

It is all part of the notion to question everything, to truly get an understanding of where you are in life. Never just settle because the way seems less painful.

Dreams worth realizing are worth the heartache and pain. Sorrow and bouts of self-doubt are a part of the process. But when the way seems redundant and mediocrity becomes a part of your inbox or gets assigned a speed dial number on your cell phone, then maybe it is time to reassess, inventory, dialogue and cross-examine what is more valuable.

Why? Because that’s what thinking, feeling individuals do!