Because

As I small child I often asked a lot of “Why” questions. Why this? Why that? My inquisitive questioning however was often met by my parents with the short answer: “Because.” So of course I would have to ask the next question, “Because why?” And very often that question was met by another short answer:“Just because.”
We often want to know why something happened or what happened as the result of something else happening. We try to understand the reason or cause for it. We use the word "because", well, because it often helps us understand why something happened.

Many times our questions reach a dead end, not because our parents or others don’t want to answer us, but because they may not know the answer, have a hard time explaining it, or worry that we will not be able to correctly comprehend the answer.
There is a well know principle sometimes simply called cause and effect. It is based on the concept that an action or event will produce a certain response to the action in the form of another event. The cause portion of cause and effect is the “why” it is happening portion. The effect portion of cause and effect refers to “what” is happening.

In order to get to the root of a problem it is often important to understand the relationship of cause and effect.

Finding the cause of something quickly is often crucial, especially if it is life threatening. Medical experts are called in to address the issue immediately.
Legal solutions to problems may not be life threatening but often require the discovery of causation.

While in law school I was introduced to many legal concepts regarding causation. I learned there are two general types of causation in the law; cause-in-fact and proximate (or legal) cause. As law students, in order to understand the cause-in-fact concept, we would us a simple test. It was called the “but-for” test” : but for a certain action, the result would not have happened. For example, but for a driver running a red light, a collision would not have occurred.

In the law, a proximate cause is an effect sufficiently related to a legally recognizable injury to be held in the cause of that injury. For any act to cause a harm, both the cause-in-fact and proximate cause test must be met.
But there were also concepts of causation with regards to legal defenses. If there is a cause that is unforeseeable, it may absolve someone of liability.

For example if a person has carelessly spill gasoline near a pile of cigarette butts in an alley behind a restaurant, the fact that a restaurant patron later carelessly threw a cigarette butt into the gasoline, the gasoline would still be deemed a foreseeable cause and would not absolve the person who spilled the gasoline even though the cigarette butt sparked a fire. However, if the restaurant patron intentionally threw the cigarette butt into the gasoline, because he wanted to see it ignite, this intentional act would likely be unforeseeable and therefore a superseding cause.

However both the act and the injury must be unforeseeable. For instance, if a contractor was responsible for fencing or marking a hole in the ground where construction work is taking place, and negligently fails to do so while a subcontractor is working in the hole. Then a driver negligently does not take his or her medication before driving and drives into the unmarked hole, injuring the subcontractor, the contractor would most likely still be liable for the injury to the subcontractor even in light of the intervening negligent act (failure to take medication/bad driving) of the driver. This is because even though the negligent act of the driver is not foreseeable, the fact of the injury is foreseeable (a car falling into a hole because there is no fencing).

There are proximate factors and ultimate factors related to cause and effect in all the areas of our lives. Cause and effect have often been referred to as a part of a universal law known as the universal law of cause and effect.

There are other universal laws that have similar characteristics to the law of cause and effect. Newton’s 3rd law of motion, for example can be stated this way: There is an equal and opposite reaction to every action. Although it is not identical to the concepts of cause and effect, this scientific law is soundly based in a similar principle of action and reaction.

A lot of people I know are going though hard times and are facing problems that are hard to comprehend or explain. Life has its share of not fair.

During these times "because" doesn't seem like a good enough answer. But sometimes "because" is really the only answer.

Wow What a Week It Has Been.

Last Thursday I changed my schedule and made an unexpected visit to see my Grandmother. One week later and I was a pall bearer at her funeral.

My mother’s mother lived to be 86. Old age really didn’t take its toil until recently. In fact, the night of her death, she was surrounded by one son, one daughter, one daughter in-law, and three grandchildren. No one coordinated the visit, and no one expected Grandma to pass away within minutes of everyone’s arrival.

I made it there two minutes too late. But I was glad I stopped to see her last Thursday.

Farewell Grand Ma! We love you and we will miss you!

Pull From The Roots

It's a saturday in the middle of July. Yardwork is calling me, but I'm not listening. Blogging is better than weeding. But the weeds just keep growing.

I remember as a small boy the chores of the summer, which included mowing the lawn and pulling weeds. I dreaded pulling the weeds the most. It always seemed like there was an endless supply of weeds. And, for some reason, the weeds always grew faster than the grass. For this reason it was easy to spot the weeds on the lawn, especially the dandelions.

I learned, over time, that the weeds were easier to pull out of the ground, if the earth was moist. If I waited until midday when it was dry and hot, it was practically impossible to pull out the weeds.
Sometimes I did not pull out the weeds before I mowed the lawn. I would just skip that task. And, when the lawn was freshly cut, no one could tell there had been any weeds at all.

But within only a day or two, the weeds would return, sometimes in greater numbers, and they always grew faster than the grass.
When my mother realized what I had done, she would promptly send me out again to the lawn or to the garden to pull weeds. But the second attempt was often as futile as the first. This time, instead of mowing down the weeds, I would just pull off the tops of the weeds.

At first glance, it looked like I had successfully removed the weeds. But in a day or two there would be compelling evidence, all over the lawn: a new crop of weeds would implicate me for my carelessness.

My mother would send me out again, but this time she would follow me, saying things like “If you had done it right the first time you wouldn’t be doing it again.” I watched her pull a few weeds, sometimes with a tool, and sometimes with just her bare hands. As she pulled the weeds she would often say. “if you want to get rid of the weed, once and for all, you have got to pull from the roots.”
Over the years I have often thought of my mother’s statement while pulling weeds in my own yard. I would reflect on her words “Pull from the roots” over and over again.

Solving life’s problems require that we do more than scratch the surface. We need to get to the root of the problem. We need to pull from the roots.

A friend once said to me “We’ve all got problems, stand in line.”

I laughed at first at this comment, but then I quietly thought about what he said. My friend was right. No one is exempt from problems. We live in a world full of problems. And there are some really big problems out there. Here is list of a few:

Abortion
Addiction
Aging/ Elderly Issues
AIDS
Alcoholism
Being a single parent
Child abuse/ Spousal Abuse
Civil Disorder
Crime
Debt
Divorce
Disabilities
Drugs/Drug violence
Economic Survival
Education Crisis
Environment issues
Ethnic Strife/Prejudice
Famine/Starvation
Financial Crisis
Gangs/ Gang violence
Greed
Health Care Costs
Homelessness
Homicide/ Suicide
Illiteracy
Incest/ Sexual Abuse
Insurance Costs
Legal Costs
Massacres/Holocaust
Media influences
Moral Decay
Natural Disasters
Oppression/ Tyranny/ Slavery
Pornography
Poverty
Racism
Rape
Sexism
Smoking Addiction
Taxes
Terrorism
War
Wide spread Diseases
World Economic Competition

The above list of problems is not a complete list, but newspapers are filled, every day, with headlines and news reports covering tragic stories about problems like these.

Problems can make us feel helpless and hopeless. It is easy to get caught up in problems because there are so many and some are so very severe.

But the biggest problem could be that, as individuals, and as a society for that matter, we have become too problem focused. And we have become to jaded and numb because of it.

The first problem that could be in the way of progress is that the problem focus is the problem. Of course we need to give problems proper attention, but not too much attention. We need to strive to find solutions. We need to be solution focused!

So what is the solution. We need to be action oriented!

I better go pull some weeds.