6 Honest Serving Men to 7 Million Whys
Language has been my lifelong love, my key to the world. From the moment Mrs. Dawson, my first-grade teacher in Elmira, NY, taught us the “A-E-I-O-U and sometimes Y” chant to answer her question of “What are the vowels?” I was hooked on words. Little wonder I had a long career as a writer and a teacher.
Somewhere along my journey from student to journalist to teacher to business communicator and back again, my fascination with poor ole y’s identity crisis (consonant or vowel?) was subsumed by the larger question of its sound-alike WHY.
In college, we journalism majors learned the first part of a rhyme by Rudyard Kipling, “The Six Honest Serving Men”:
I keep six honest serving-men
(They taught me all I knew);
Their names are What and Why and When
And How and Where and Who.
All of these are important elements in any story, be it factual or fictional, and I’ve spent most of my life in their service, in one pursuit or another. But I never knew then of another part of this rhyme that perhaps fits me more as I age:
But different folk have different views;
I know a person small—
She keeps ten million serving-men,
Who get no rest at all!
She sends’em abroad on her own affairs,
From the second she opens her eyes—
One million Hows, two million Wheres,
And seven million Whys!
The “person small” Kipling writes of is most certainly a child, and it’s hard not to love the unfathomable curiosity of children. I’ve had such curiosity all my life, lurking behind all my journalist’s questions, which others–from interview subjects to doctors to mere acquaintances–sometimes find irritating.
But now that I’m retired and depend on no one for income or approval, fleshing out WHY is my favorite focus. I, too, have at least 7 million WHYs I want answered: Why are people the way they are? Why did such and such happen to me when I was a kid or a teenager or a young adult and how did it shape me? Why did I dream what I dreamed and what’s its consequence?
I’m always holding up my mirror and looking for the why in myself and in the world making up my reflection’s backdrop. What’s the point of life if we don’t keep asking ourselves WHY and wondering over the wealth or lack of answers?
The stories and insights I share here may seem to take round-about paths to answers, but WHY is always the motivation. I actually can’t promise I’ll always find the WHY answer. I can only promise I’ll keep looking and hope you’ll join me in this pursuit of & {sometimes} WHY.
If you have insights I’ve missed, please share in the comments section. Seekers are welcome; unkind or irrelevant content will be removed and its sources blocked.
& {sometimes} WHY 