Written by: Āndrew Boyton
In Leadership, we often find ourselves drawn to the question of why. This question leads us into narratives about the past, into explanations that can comfort us, even soothe us, yet rarely alter the way we actually live. We may dedicate years to tracing the causes of our behaviour, exploring our motives, and excavating the origins in childhood. And yet, frequently, we remain trapped in the same patterns.
What matters more, as Irvin Yalom has emphasised repeatedly, is what you are doing and how you are being right now, in this present moment.
The "what" is where meaning is made. It is in the what that you complete something, that you become something. The what asks you to be present to your own life as it unfolds. It invites you to experience yourself in the act of becoming, to remain attentive to the gradual process through which you grow whole. This is not a destination but a continuous attending, a perpetual awakening to who you are in the doing.
Consider how easily we lose ourselves in the why am I experiencing life? This question, seemingly profound, can trap us in abstraction. We become philosophers of our own existence rather than participants in it. The mind spins endlessly, seeking grand narratives to justify our presence here, when life itself is happening around us, unnoticed.
The Gestalt understanding offers us something more useful. The mind naturally seeks completion, wholeness. A figure emerges from the background only when we attend to it. But if we remain fixated on the question of why, we fragment our attention. We break life into pieces to be analysed rather than experiencing it as an unfolding whole. We miss what is actually calling for our attention.
The real work begins with a different turn: What am I experiencing right now? This grounds us. It brings us back to the actual texture of life, the sensations, the encounters, the small gestures that constitute being alive. And from this presence, a further question emerges naturally: What am I missing? What am I not seeing? What remains incomplete in this moment that requires my response?
This is the work of making whole. In Gestalt terms, we notice the incompleteness, the unfinished figure. A conversation left unspoken. A truth avoided. A connection was ignored. And we ask: How may I address this? What small act of courage, what moment of honesty, what gesture of presence might complete what is broken or unfinished?
Think of two trees in a forest. One tree uses its time and resources to grow, to extend its roots deeper into the soil, to turn its leaves toward the light, to sway with the wind and experience its world. It responds to the seasons. It offers shelter to creatures. It becomes stronger through the very act of living. The other tree spends its energy asking why it is a tree, why it is rooted in this particular soil, and why its branches grow in this direction rather than another. It contemplates the origins of its form, the reasons for its existence. While it asks these questions, its roots do not deepen. Its leaves do not fully open. It does not become.
Growth, real growth, requires engagement. Therapy and art are not destinations to be understood but processes to be inhabited. When we engage with the content and process of becoming, we do not merely gain insight. We transform. We become different through doing. The artist does not ask why she must paint. She paints, and in the painting, she discovers who she is. The person in therapy does not ask why she suffers. She turns toward the suffering, she speaks it, she looks at it directly, and in that engagement, something shifts. Growth emerges not from explanation but from participation.
If we focus endlessly on the why, perhaps we gain psychological understanding. We accumulate explanations. We construct narratives that feel satisfying to the mind. But growth remains elusive. The tree asking why never reaches maturity. It remains suspended in questioning while life passes.
Existence unfolds through action.
The life you are constructing is not determined solely by the reasons you can articulate, but by the choices you actually make. By how you speak. By how you respond. By what you choose to avoid. And by what you find the courage to confront.
Yet there is a peculiar danger in the endless pursuit of why. When we remain absorbed in explanation, we risk losing ourselves entirely. The self becomes merely a collection of causes and effects, a narrative to be analysed rather than a person to be lived. We become so preoccupied with understanding the origins of our patterns that we forget we are the ones perpetuating them. The self dissolves into story, and we become strangers to our own agency.
Why can become a convenient refuge from responsibility. It permits us to explain ourselves, which is quite different from confronting ourselves. But existential work poses a different question altogether: Given all that has occurred, what will you choose to do now?
Freedom lives in that shift. It lives in the recognition that you are not merely the product of your past, but an active participant in the creation of your present. It lives in the willingness to turn from endless explanation toward immediate experience, from abstraction toward the concrete reality of what is incomplete and what calls to be made whole.
When we turn our attention to what we are actually doing, we move away from explanation and toward responsibility. We move away from analysis and toward choice. And it is through choice, repeatedly, over and over, that a life acquires its shape. It is through the what, not the why, that we discover who we actually are. It is in the making whole, in the attending to what is incomplete, that we become fully present to our own existence. It is in the engagement with life itself, not the analysis of it, that we grow.
Reflection for the Reader
Sit quietly for a moment. Bring to mind a pattern in your leadership or your life that you have been trying to understand. Perhaps you have explored its origins, its causes, and the historical reasons it exists. Now pause that exploration.
Instead, turn your attention to what is actually happening right now in this pattern. What are you doing? How are you showing up? What is incomplete? What remains unspoken?
What single action, taken today, would move this pattern toward wholeness?
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