Most of us hold firmly to a belief in cause and effect. We believe that everything has a precipitating cause – thus everything must also have a “reason.” And we are hooked on looking for these reasons. To find the reasons behind what we see, experience, or feel we ask questions - of others, of ourselves, of God or the universe, or of no one in particular (“Why in the world did that have to happen?”).

We are so driven to look for reasons that we ask questions even in situations where the answer does not really matter much to us. For example, when we read in the newspaper that someone we don’t know died – the first question that comes to our mind is, “Why did he/she die?” But in reality, what does it matter? When we hear that someone committed a crime we feel compelled to understand why he or she did it – but here again, why is it important to know the reason?

In many ways our search for reasons is driven by our desire to live in a rational universe. We want to believe that everything has a logical reason – that things happen for a reason and don’t just happen randomly – that chaos is not in control. So fixated are we on “reasons” that not only do we constantly search for them – we also constantly feel compelled to judge them. When we hear a reason we are quick to ask, “Was that a good reason? A bad reason? Understandable? Logical?”

This obsession with reasons has some interesting consequences. Firstly, it causes us to overlook the fact that a large proportion of the reasons we are given (by ourselves and others) are made up. They are actually the logical explanations we (or others) concoct because admitting in a given situation, “I really had no reason to think or do what I did” sounds stupid or flippant. But the reality is that we often don’t know why we feel or do things.

Even more importantly, our strong belief and commitment to “a reason for everything” philosophy causes us to believe that we must have a reason to be happy – that we need some specific thing or things to make us happy. And indeed it seems that there are lots of things that do seem to make us happy – strong and loving relationships, good health, money, success. When we have these things in our lives we and others believe we have good “reason to be happy.” And when we are not happy we begin to catalogue the things or circumstances it would take to change our feeling state and make us happy. We tell ourselves, “I would be happy if...” (I had more money; my boyfriend/husband/parent/child would pay more attention to me; I could move someplace warm; my boss was a more reasonable person, etc.).