Wherefore Art Thou - not the why but the wherefore

Stephen Barden suggests that before we ask ourselves why? - to give us purpose - we could be asking "wherefore?" What is that place where we and our world value one another at the deepest level? And how is that question practical - let alone invaluable-  in today's world? 

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Transcript

WHEREFORE ART THOU? (Volume 1)

Simon Sinek advocates “Find your why” and, according to his website, defines that “WHY” “as the contribution you make to the world. It encompasses both your professional and personal purpose.”

And I love that. What is not to love about anyone who helps us get off the hamster wheel to ask “hang on, if I am a unique person, what’s my unique contribution to the world? What gives me my purpose in this world?”

But is “why” the first question we should be asking? Doesn’t something crucial come before that? What, after all, is it that gives us meaning in purpose or even to pursue a purpose in the first place?  

Purpose and Meaning are not the same thing although they are interlinked.  Both depend on at least two key factors: who you are and where you are. 

Why, “where”? because who you are is never in isolation: you are always in relationship with your world – the context, the “where” of your existence.

So, much of who you are is actually the network of assumptions, built up through your exploration and experiences, in that “where”. It’s that experience of your interactions with the world that forms your meaning. And what do I call meaning?  Both the value we place on ourselves in relationship with the world, and the value we place on our world. It is that intersection where we believe we and our world regard one another at our highest worth. It is where we and our world meet in our hearts. Not as transactional contributors to one another but as being. 

So, instead of asking why, it may be wise to ask “wherefore”? For which place are you in the world?

“Wherefore art thou, Romeo.” Juliet demanded in Shakespeare ‘s play. Not why are you, Romeo, as some interpret. But– “For-where are you, Romeo?” Where is your place, Romeo. Where is your place in the world? Not the physical place, but the space that you give yourself in the world, with which you identify and which gives you meaning? Where for, art thou Romeo? 

Interestingly by the way, in German “what for” is actually made up of the words wofür: Wo – meaning where, and für meaning for.

Before the why – comes the wherefore. And of course, bound up in the wherefore is the wherefrom, to discover (and change if necessary) the who. And whereto 

“Deny thy father”, pleads Juliet,

“And refuse thy name.

Of if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love

And I’ll no longer be a Capulet.

`Tis but thy name that is my enemy:

Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.”

Juliet knows that the only way Romeo can discover wherefore he is, is to know and understand wherefrom he truly is. Don’t be defined by others, she’s saying to him. Find “for-where” you really are. Is to be in the house of Montague with its power, loyalties and conflicts – is that what gives you meaning, is that what defines you, or is it to be in the house of the free man prepared to stand up for who and what you love? 

It is the journey and the terrain through which we travel that forms and re-forms us. And as we are shaped and reshaped, so we change the places that we make for ourselves in our migration through life. Our mistake – our big mistake – happens when we think we can occupy the same where-fores in our world, throughout our adult lives. Actually, the really big mistake is to think that we occupy our places of meaning as if our meaning and self-value cannot change. As if life and our experiences stand still, while we ponder our meaning. Meaning – wherefore - needs to be revisited time and time again. When we say, for example, life has lost its meaning for me, we’re really saying is: I don’t know what my world and I mean to each other. I haven’t discovered – or rediscovered - the mutual meaning that my world and I have for one another.

And, by the way, using the word “life” is bound to fill anyone with helplessness. Life is limitless. It cannot possibly lose its meaning for anyone. It’s not even the world:  you certainly haven’t experienced all, or even the majority of the world. It’s your world - which you experience directly – that you’re struggling with. It’s your value meeting-point that you need to find or rediscover. Not, in judgement; not as a transaction; not even in doing or in contributing. It’s where you find your world at its most precious: that’s where you’ll find your own value. And if you can’t find it at first, go back and try again. There must be something in your world that is precious. Even in the face of your home being bombed, your family destroyed, your freedom strangled, you get to know what is precious: human safety, human life, human freedom. That’s your worth.

An interesting thought is starting to emerge for me. My research model of the Navigational Stance found that the most successful leaders were those who learned – from an early age – to assume that they and their world held a reasonable balance of power: that they and their world could, as I put it, do business together. If that has some truth then it should also be true that those who hold a reasonable balance of power with their world, also hold a reasonable balance of value, of meaning with their world. So, could it be that one of the ways to achieve that balance of power with your world, (which is so necessary) is to find the balance of value first? Your wherefore?  

You might be starting to wonder, so where’s the purpose in all this? What’s the point of finding your worth, your meaning, your wherefore if you can’t do anything with it?

By focusing on doing, particularly before you have some idea of your meaning place, you’re actually threatening your value altogether.

You’re seeing your value and that of the world, as a means to an end. You’re saying to yourself, neither my world nor I have value unless we do something. So, of course, your search for your “wherefore” will be tainted by “how can I use this?” or “what can I do with this?” You won’t be searching for meaning – you’ll be hunting for a place to do; you’ll be looking for a transaction.. What’s worse, if you have struggled with meaning, and therefore struggled with acting effectively, you’ll judge yourself by your lack of action or success rather than by your fit with your world.

Juliet didn’t tell Romeo, are you a man or a mouse. Make up your bloody mind and do something. She asked him to find himself first – and then to take action, according to what gave him meaning. Actually, according to the meaning and value he and his world held for one another.  Wherefore art thou Romeo? Not what are you going to do?

Of course, taking premature action, without finding that balance of value first, can also lead to you confusing meaning with purpose. Your purpose, for example, may be to destroy your competitor, to conquer your enemy. But destruction, conquest, is born of fear. Fear that if you don’t win, if you don’t obliterate, you will be obliterated. If there were no fear involved, you would have little problem “doing business”, working with the other. So, unless you see your highest value as being in fear, then that purpose cannot be aligned to your meaning. After all, in this case, your purpose would be to obliterate your fear and therefore the enemy that makes you fearful. And if you carried on down that path, your world -your entire world- would end up being your enemy. You would gobble each other up in terror. 

So, first understand and clarify your meaning – where you are in your world – and then you can work on your purpose. 

Jumping to purpose and therefore action, before clarifying your wherefore –where you and your world can be at your best – means that you can never act at your best. 

There’s a wonderful quote from Bob Dylan’s “Chronicles Volume One that I was reminded of by The Wisdom Letter in Substack:” the worth of things can’t be measured by what they cost but by what they cost you to get it, and that if anything costs you your faith or your family, then the price is too high…”

When the balance with your world is out of kilter – be it the balance of power or value – there will always be a cost, whether one is focused on winning, making money or just scrambling up the career ladder. It isn’t a matter of good and evil – all of those things can be done either benevolently or with malice. It’s a matter of imbalance and the cost of it.

Of course, if you’re acting urgently to survive, you are not going to sit down and ponder your meaning. That’s when pure purpose comes into play. 

So…. This is all very well, but how do we apply that in our world?  In our real world? And can the search for the wherefore – apply to individuals, organizations and countries? I believe it can. 

As individuals we don’t have the advantage that new organizations have: that of starting with a relatively clean sheet. By the time we are in a position to think meaningfully about our “wherefore”, we will have held, for many years, deeply entrenched assumptions about that most basic relationship we have with our world – that of our relative power. This relationship is what I called the Navigational Stance in my book – “How successful leaders do business with their world” – and is, of course, the obsession of this podcast series. 

The problem with the formation of this navigational stance is that it isn’t ours and it isn’t even necessarily a reflection of reality. Our explorations as children are always mitigated by adults, by people with more power. And, of course, because the relationship is about relative power (about what you can and cannot do with your world) it contaminates your value. The chances are that if you’ve been taught that taking up a particular space (being a musician, mathematician, or an actor) is not “a good thing” or “is not for you”, you’re probably not going to see that as a place of meaning for you. If you find that, as a kid you always came last in sprinting, the chances are that you’re not going to pursue athletics, unless an adult (either your parent, coach or teacher), decided to train you. 

So, the first step in clarifying your wherefore as an adult, is to unpick your assumptions that you built up as a child about your wherefore. Look at them without judgement. All you want to know is what are the significant things you learned to assume, if possible how and why. How they have affected you and whether you still agree with them. Explore with curiosity – and dispassionately. 

Then, when you’re ready, think about this: where is the intersection where I care deeply about my world? So much so that I want to be there, work with it, grow it, nurture it? For example, if you are a lawyer…Do you find yourself caring so much about the law – that working with your colleagues, challenging bad law, defending sound principles, defending clients, that you have no doubt that you and that world hold deep meaning for one another? 

What part of the law? Is it teaching? Is being on the bench? 

If none of those, then is there another place where I love being in? The kitchen. Making furniture? Is there a place that I haven’t even thought of for years because I grew up believing it “wasn’t for me” or “it wasn’t a serious job” for a grown up? 

And I know there are times when we believe we have no choice, where we have to stick it out to support a family, or even just to survive. What’s the good of finding your wherefore then? This is what it could do: it could help you understand who you are when you are at your best; it could certainly help you feel that there is a place where the world and you are at peace, where you don’t have to battle. And it can help you bring some of that peace and belonging into the work where you have to be right now, because that’s the only place where you can earn a living. 

What can I bring of my wherefore into the place that I’m in now, that would help me bring some value and some caring into it?  My brother was an extraordinarily creative – and tender – man. His life and his upbringing told him that these were places that a farmer fending for his family should have no time for. I remember watching him, strip and put together an old truck on his farm. Not for fun, but because he needed to. A new truck – or even hiring a mechanic was out of the question. As I watched, handing him the odd, wrench, screwdriver or file, I noticed that he worked each part with extraordinary care, patience and tenderness. He was creating. He had brought his creativity and sensitivity into a place where he had to be – rather than wanted to be. He had brought his place of meaning – his wherefore - into a world which did not give him joy. He made it bearable and it made that truck run much more strongly than it ever should have. 

The key, I think, from this exploration, is finding the place where you care for your context – your wherefore. It’s your world, so you care about what you’re doing there, the people in it, your values and ethics, its future, is history. And because you care for and about that world of yours, it inevitably cares for you. And if you’re in a place because you have to be there, that brings you little joy, bring something from your place of caring. And it will help both you and your work run much more strongly than ever. 

There’s so much more to talk about on this – and I have gone back more often than was reasonable to add yet another thought. I’m also well aware that the place of meaning – the “wherefore” - can sound like yet another gooey, marshmallow – that people earning a living or running a business will find very little use for. Other than it tastes good for a very short moment. All I can say is that I hope I’ve shown that the wherefore, finding it and living it, is neither soft nor a utopia. It’s a real place where you and your world meet in a balance of power, value and care. 

In the next episode, I’ll continue the theme – exploring the wherefore of organizations.

As usual, I more than welcome any thoughtful comments.  

I’m Stephen Barden, this has been another episode of The Power of Balance.