The More Important Question is "What NOW?"
When I was very young, I incessantly asked, "Why". "We can't go outside - Why? Well it's raining. Why? and Why can't we go outside in the rain and why does rain happen?" My parents were saints often seeing my curiosity as a cute phase and not annoying as hell. As I have grown older, I have not grown out of the phase, but in fact I have sharpened the inquisitive way in which I address the world. The why's began not to shape my worldview and encourage curiosity, but suffocate me in confusion, limit me by my lack of answers.
The exception to this "why" game was math class, I was never particularly good at math, but I especially found it inaccessible when questions were abstract and without applicable use. Math - circa algebra 2 - was when I began to surpass the 'why' question and begin to ask 'what now?' I don't need to know why X-2=Y+7, what I need to know is how to understand it and what next? What do I do with this?
I believe that the best way to solve problems is to avoid the unanswerable why - that question is poisonous and holds no solution. The useful, healthy, and also generally more challenging question is "what NOW". Of course causation might play into next steps but it cannot become all-consuming.
Why is there injustice? Many factors seem to far gone to remember but I ask what now? Now what do I do? Why am I queer? I can't answer, but I will tell you what I will do after. Why does our world create imbalance - regardless I will do what I can where I am and with what I have.
I believe that the past and the why's matter, but how they inform how we live and love is the greater call to question.
Claire is living the "what NOW" as a Mission Corps volunteer at St. Anthony's School in Camden, NJ teaching 5th and 6th grade.
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