So,
Every one of us is carrying at least one question.
That has never been answered.
Why did he or she leave?
Why did he or she never say it?
But why did I get sick and not my brother?
Why did they stop speaking to me?
Why that night,
That road,
That hour?
Why me?
And some of these questions are 20 years old.
Some are 20 days old.
And they share one thing.
New answer is coming.
Not from the person.
Not from the doctor.
And if you believe in the word not from God,
Not from the universe.
The question is simply open.
And it's going to stay open.
And you are going to have to live anyway.
So the talk is about how to do that.
Note how to close the question.
How to live with it open and still have a life.
So let me tell you about someone.
And she's a blend of a few people I've sat with.
And with the details changed,
Of course.
So nobody could recognize themselves.
But everything about her is true to what I see.
So Orla was 48.
A nurse.
20 years mattered.
Two grown children.
And a husband who came home one Thursday evening.
Sat down at the kitchen table.
And said he didn't love her anymore and hadn't for a long time.
And when she asked why.
He said he didn't know.
And then he left.
And he never gave her anything more than that.
Not then.
And not in the three years since.
Now by the time she came to me,
She had notebooks.
Actual notebooks Theories and Deeds things he said in 2019 that might have been clues.
She'd also gone back through photographs,
Looking for the exact month his face changed.
She'd read everything written about why men leave.
And she could actually quote it.
She described it to me with a dry laugh.
As having a detective's wall in her head minus the string.
And she wasn't sleeping.
Because at three in the morning.
That question would start up again.
And her mind would go back through the files one more time.
Looking for the thing it had missed.
So I'll come back to order.
Let's look at what the question was doing to her.
Because it's what unanswered questions do to all of us.
So your brain.
Among other things,
Is a prediction machine.
And its main job all day is working out what's going to happen next.
So it can keep you safe.
And it does that by building explanations.
Why did that happen?
What does it mean?
What will it mean next time?
So when it gets an explanation.
It files the event and moves on.
But when it doesn't.
It keeps the file open.
And open files cost energy.
So there's a well-known finding in psychology.
Nearly a hundred years old now.
And it's a researcher.
Called Bloomer.
Noticed that waiters could remember every detail of an order while it was unpaid.
And forgot it almost completely.
The moment the bill was settled.
Unfinished things stay active in the mind.
Finished things get put away.
So an unanswered why is the most unfinished thing there is.
And the brain treats it like an unpaid bill.
Keeps on sending reminders.
Usually it's at three in the morning.
Now researchers have also studied How much people can tolerate not knowing?
And they found it varies a great deal.
Some of us can leave a question open and get on with the day.
Others feel it as a kind of physical itch,
A pressure.
A need to resolve it that won't switch off.
And that need to know.
That intolerance of uncertainty.
Turns out to be one of the biggest engines of anxiety.
Not the uncertainty itself,
But the inability to bear it.
And here is what matters most,
Clinically.
There is a difference between two kinds of going over things.
One kind would ask,
Why?
Why did this happen?
Why me?
Why didn't I see it?
Why did they?
And the other asks what.
What do I do now?
What's the next step?
And what do I need today?
And the research is fairly clear here.
The y kind done over and over tends to deepen low mood and keep people stuck.
And the word kind tends to move people forward.
Even when the why is never answered.
Same event,
Same pain,
A different question,
A different outcome.
Even if you take this from today's talk,
It might help you.
Moving from why to what?
Now Orla's notebooks were three years of Y.
And every page of them had been,
In its own way,
A way of not grieving.
Because as long as the case is open,
She didn't have to accept that he's gone.
So this is not a new problem.
It actually might be the oldest one there is.
Now,
I am not aligned with any religion,
But There is a book in the Hebrew Bible,
The book of Job.
And that's thousands of years old.
And it's actually entirely about this.
A good man.
Good man loses everything.
His children,
His health,
His livelihood.
And he spends almost the whole book asking why.
And his friends turn up and offer explanations.
You must have done something.
God has a plan.
It'll make sense later.
All the things people still say at funerals.
At the end.
When God finally answers,
Out of a whirlwind,
There is no explanation.
None.
Instead,
God starts to ask job questions.
Where were you when I laid the foundations of the earth?
Can you bind the stars?
And Job,
Who had demanded an answer for 40 chapters,
Just goes quiet.
Not because he got one.
Because something larger than the question showed up.
And in its presence,
The question stopped being the point.
And I think about this very often.
The oldest text we have on suffering doesn't give us a why.
It gives us a presence instead.
And somehow That's enough for job to live again.
600 years ago.
I wasn't there.
An English monk.
Whose name we don't know.
Wrote a book called The Cloud of Unknowing.
And his whole argument was the deepest things can't be reached by understanding them.
Only by a kind of loving attention that gives up on understanding.
A kind of loving attention that gives up on understanding.
And he called the giving up a clout.
And said you had to be willing to stay in it.
And then the Zen tradition has a phrase for the same thing.
They call it the don't-know mind.
Not stupid,
Not vague.
Remember,
Open.
Don't no-mind.
A mind that can hold a question without needing to close it.
And then the poet.
Drill kick writing to a young man who wanted answers.
Told him to be patient with everything unresolved in his heart.
And try to love the questions.
Not to sog them,
But to love them.
So I can go on about philosophy,
But I'll stop here.
Different centuries,
Different traditions,
Different words.
But if you look very closely,
It's the same instruction.
Stop reaching,
Stay in the not knowing.
Because something happens there that can't happen while you're still searching.
I want to say something about faith here because it belongs in this talk.
Because I think the word has been misunderstood.
Many people think faith means being certain.
Having the answer and holding it tightly.
Now,
I have come to think the opposite.
Faith is what you need precisely when you don't have the answer.
Faith is what you need precisely when you don't have the answer.
It's the willingness to keep living,
Keep loving,
Keep getting up in the morning,
Without the why.
Remember,
This certainty doesn't need faith.
Because certainty has the answer.
Faith is for the open question.
And you don't have to be religious to have it.
Some people put the open question in God's hands.
Some put it in time's hands.
And some like me just say out loud,
I don't know and I'm going to live anywhere.
And that sentence is itself a kind of it.
Now in Ireland.
We have a short version of it that people have said for generations.
At hospital doors and gravesides and also kitchen tables.
It'll be revealed in time.
Or it won't.
Either way.
The tea gets made.
It'll be revealed in time.
Or it won't Either way.
The tea gets made.
So.
.
.
We didn't solve the case.
With Orla,
We didn't solve the case.
I want to be clear about that.
Because.
People sometimes come hoping.
The therapist,
The practitioner will be the detective that cracks it.
So I had no idea why her husband left.
Neither does she.
What we did instead slowly was change the question.
So every time Y came up and it came up a lot constantly.
We noticed it.
We let it be that And then we asked a different one.
Not why did he leave.
What do you need today?
Not why didn't I see the red flags?
What's in front of you this afternoon.
Not what was wrong with me.
But what's still here?
And she hated it at first.
Cancelled a few sessions.
It felt like giving up.
And it felt like letting him off the hook.
And underneath that It felt like admitting he was really gone.
And then about 4 months in.
She came in.
And said something I've never forgotten.
She said.
I still don't know why.
But I noticed on a Tuesday.
That I hadn't thought about until after breakfast.
And I didn't go looking.
And that's it.
So that's what living with an open question looks like.
The question didn't close.
The question began to get quieter.
And her life began to get louder.
She still has those notebooks,
By the way.
In a drawer.
She says she might burn them,
Which I don't recommend.
And she might not.
Or maybe she does.
They're her notebooks.
So now,
Let's do something with this.
And we don't have to burn anything and you don't need a notebook.
This is just a short guided practice.
I would invite you to settle wherever you are.
Wherever you are,
Set it.
Where are my hands?
Where are my feet?
Where are my hips?
Where is my breath?
And then whatever is beneath you,
Let that take your weight.
And let your breathing be however it is today.
I'd like you to bring to mind a question in your life.
That has never been answered.
And please choose one you can touch today without being overwhelmed.
If the biggest one is too raw,
Choose a smaller one.
There is always a smaller one.
A question in your life that has not been answered,
That doesn't overwhelm you.
Bring that up now.
And just let it be here now.
Don't try to answer it.
Just let the questions sit in the room with you.
Now notice what your body does in its presence.
And many people notice a leaning forward.
Are tightening behind the eyes.
A kind of reaching.
As if the answer were just out of sight.
And you could get it if you looked a little harder.
Some jaws clench.
Some burning in the stomach.
The bread goes high and shallow.
And some notice a tiredness,
A heaviness which is very old.
Just notice the presence of that question and do nothing with it.
Now this is the searching The body has been doing it,
On and off.
Ever since the question arrived.
Just feel what it costs.
Now let's try something.
Say very quietly,
Insight.
The truest three words there are for this.
I don't know.
Not,
I don't know yet.
Not,
I'll find out.
Just.
.
.
I don't know.
I don't know.
I don't know.
And now notice what the body does when the surge is called off.
Even for a moment.
Maybe the ice softened.
Maybe the shoulder is dropped.
And maybe the breath goes lower.
Maybe there is grief.
Because the surging was keeping something at bay.
So let whatever comes,
Come.
And now imagine the question again in front of you.
Where you can see it.
And now give it a shape that you like.
Maybe it's a closed door.
Maybe it's a stone.
Maybe it's cold.
Maybe it's a cloud.
And instead of pushing it away.
Just let it be there,
Open.
And then you might say to it.
You can stay open.
I am not going to solve you.
And I am going to live anyway.
You can stay open.
I am not going to solve you And I'm going to live anyway.
And now,
Just for today.
Let's change the question.
Ask the body a different kind of question.
Not why,
But what?
What's still here in my life?
That the question hasn't taken.
What's still here in my life.
That the question hasn't taken.
And let the answers come.
And now.
.
.
Feel your body.
The weight of it the breath.
The room around you.
And the ordinary afternoon again.
Let the question stay where it is.
You know where to find it.
And if your eyes were closed.
When you're ready,
You can let your eyes open.
So what does this look like in a daily life?
It looks like noticing when the search starts up.
3 in the morning or in the car or when a song comes on.
There's always a why.
And instead of going back through the files,
Just say three words.
I don't know.
And then asking the other question.
What do I need right now?
It's usually sleep.
It looks like letting other people's explanations go past.
Because they'll often offer them.
Just like jobs friends did.
Everything happens for a reason.
It wasn't meant to be.
You'll understand someday.
They mean well.
And they can't bear your open question any more than you can.
So you can nod and thank them and keep your question open anyway.
It looks like grieving what the question was protecting you from.
And this is the hard part.
And it's why the search is so hard to give up.
As long as you're still asking why.
You haven't fully accepted what happened.
When you stop,
You have to So be gentle with yourself there,
Because that's the real work,
And it's slow.
And it looks like faith.
In whatever form you can manage.
Living without the answer getting up anyway and making the tea.
Trusting that a life can be whole with a hole in it.
The way a donut is still a donut.
So some questions close eventually.
Years later,
A letter comes.
A diagnosis is explained.
Or someone finally talks.
Most questions never close.
And the people I've seen find peace are not the ones who got the answer.
They are the ones who stopped needing it before it came.
Who let the question go quiet and let their life get loud.
Just for these last moments now.
The question is where you left it.
Open Hold.
And you don't need the answer to live.
I don't know.
It's held and I'm leaving it anyways.
I don't know.
It's held.
And I'm living anyway.
So on that note,
Thank you for listening.
And Namaste.
