WHY DID THE CHICKEN CROSS THE STREET?
"Hmm?" To get to the other side you dimwit.
Appropriately so, a riddle is called a riddle for a reason, it's puzzling, perplexing, and generally requires a good bit of thought and ingenuity to solve. Yet part of a riddles charm is that the answer tends to be ridiculously obvious.
Remember the Riddler from the sixties television series Batman? Or how bout from the more recent film Batman Forever? If so, surely you can recall that gimmicky green outfit he wore, ya know the one "riddled" with question marks. So tell me, ya ever get to feelin that way when it comes to your hopes and dreams? Riddled with questions I mean? Questions like, "How the *^$&# am I gonna do this or how the *@^&% am I supposed to do that? Well mull no more, because the answer to these and other prodding questions is literally (and metaphorically) right at you feet.
That's right. While your hopes and dreams are definitely and distinctly your own, and while the path you take toward realizing those hopes and dreams will certainly be no different, in actuality there's only one way down any given path. And that my frazzled friend is one incremental step at a time. Bam! Questions answered. Riddle solved. Where's my easy button?
Oops, hold on a minute, as I recall the title of this post isn't "how" did the chicken cross the street, but rather, "why" did the chicken cross the street? And for good reason I might add, because therein lies the real riddle.
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzche once said, "He who has a why to live can bear almost any how." In other words, instead of gettin too hung up on how to do something, it sounds like what we should really be asking ourselves is, "Why am I doin it?"
"Every year in the U.S. we have dozens of major marathons that attract people of all ages and from all walks of life," writes Charles A. Coonradt in his best-selling book Scorekeeping for Success. "And out of the hundreds of thousands who compete only one can hold the men's record and only one can hold the women's record. Only one! So why is it that running marathon's remains such a popular sport? What could possibly be the appeal of a sport in which 99.9 percent of all participants don't stand a fighting chance of finishing first?"
"The answer," says Coonradt, "is that marathons allow everyone to win. Everyone entered may not be able to finish first, but everyone who enters the competition can in fact win. And that's because marathons provide us with an opportunity to tap into man's oldest yardstick of accomplishment: simply being better than we've been before - even if it's only by a second."
Make no mistake, running a marathon requires a superabundance of know how. There's any number of strategies, tactics and techniques that one must consider. But in all fairness it goes much deeper than that. Unlike a relatively short jaunt across the street, a marathon takes you down a long and difficult road that's notoriously riddled with hurdles and obstacles that are every bit as mental as they are physical, and at some point or another you inevitably start asking yourself why the #$&*@ am I doin this? And quite frankly, unless you've got a rock solid rebuttal, chances are you're gonna toss in the towel long before you ever begin to hit your stride.
But (and this is a ginormous but) if you can repeatedly answer this discerning question with ironclad conviction (oh and trust me it'll rear its ugly head again and again) then the odds of you someday realizing your hopes and dreams will increase astronomically.
Ya see here's the thing, asking yourself "why" can prove to be profoundly introspective. Why? Because it's personal not practical. Emotionally it strikes a chord, and the more you delve and discover, the more you realize it's also what fuels the fire.
So whether you're hoofin it across the street (short term task) or runnin a long and laborious marathon (lifelong ambition) try and do your best not to dwell too heavily on the how, but instead, learn to focus ever so intently on the why. Because when you can bravely answer that, then you'll surely have solved one of man's most mystifying riddles. Now, the obvious question is, "how" bad do you want it? See ya next time. Till then, keeep it up.
P.S. For the record, domestic chickens aren't capable of long distance flight. Therefore if ya rule out transcendental meditation and/or divine intervention one can only conclude that when it came to venturing across the street our foul-feathered friend's only real option was to (you guessed it) do it one cluckin step at a time. Damn, where the heck's that easy button?
