Why ask why?

"You cannot judge any man beyond your knowledge of him, and how small is your knowledge," Kahlil Gibran writes in Sand and Foam. When I first read this line, years ago, I remember sitting there, feeling both moved by the truth of it and lonely. How small is my knowledge indeed. And, on the flip side, how small is everyone else's knowledge of me.

When you're faced with terrible things in your life, when someone does something to you that is beyond your comprehension, the instant reaction is to ask why. Why and how could you do that to me? What does it mean, that you could do that to me? Asking why here, though, is like asking any other kind of why: the answers can split and branch off in a thousand different directions, and you start the search knowing, deep down, that no answer you find can ever truly console or satisfy you. It's like asking why you're in the situation at all. Are you here because your parents happened to meet in 1979? Are you here because you grew up feeling out of place and lonely? Are you here because you applied to your current job on a whim and they were the first place to hire you? Are you here because of alcohol, too much compassion, a reckless disregard for the future?

Which is how I ended up remembering Mr. Gibran's words of wisdom about the other 6-odd billion people on the planet: their actions are the blend of every previous thought and experience that their lives have brought on, coalesced into that one more thought and one more action which crossed my life. If I was not enough to deter them from hurting me, then it is not my fault. Their knowledge of me is too small, even though I had assumed it was larger, and the portion of me included in the great book of Everything There Is to Know about them is not great enough to weigh out what has come before it.

This is not to say that when people are cruel that it is excusable. Everyone chooses how to use their experiences, chooses what to make of them. But the truth of the matter is not the questioning anyway. It is that "the bitterest thing in our today's sorrow is the memory of our yesterday's joy." It is grieving that what brought you happiness has caused you pain. Rather than asking why--rather than trying to actually answer why--perhaps it is better to know from the outset that you can never wholly understand. Your knowledge of the other person is always a little too small.