When--Always

We often ask "when?"
 ...      Impatience hinders answers!
Feel "always" in "when?"

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The word "when" sometimes trips me. Or should I say the feeling that leads to the word "when" trips me? When attempts to set a point in the future, it attempts to force, gently perhaps, a kind of commitment to the future, to an act, a certainty, etc. "When" signals me and the other person that I feel anxious and not trusting.

When will you come home?
When will you do the dishes?
When will you sleep with me?
When will you leave me alone?

Sometimes "when" is a more rhetorical figure:

When will you understand me?
When will they ever learn?
When will you stop cracking those stupid jokes?
When is enough enough?

And sometimes "when" denotes a moment:

When you smile I get goosebumps!
When I heard about the news I started to cry!
When you were born the world came to celebrate!
When you arrive we will all be here!

"When" implies or points to an "always." In the question "when will you come home?" I am implying the "always" of a home (i.e., a place) and the "always" of a you (i.e., a person). Also implied is a second person, always there, but questioning. Uncertain. "I want to know, when you will come home."

How would it be, if we could live with certainty? How would it be, if, instead of asking "when will you come home?" we could say with certainty (but not imperatively) "you will come home!"? It seems that by me asking you the question of when you will come home I am infusing a certain kind of uncertainty into your existence. Definitely into how you exist for me and, possibly, also into how you exist for yourself.

Legitimate as they  might seem, when-questions, just like their cousins why-questions, can do us a disfavor. Perhaps it is because they're close-ended? Can we still the need to know "when"; can we still the need to know "why?" Can we instead, live in the always now, and can we replace the cycle of why and because with the certainty of "yes?"

I wonder: Is there a sub-reality where all the question-pronouns do no longer make sense and are put to rest? A place where when, where, why, how, who are seen for what they are, viz. a fragmenting disintegrating force that cannot, in spite of its very best efforts and commitment to wholeness, do just that: establish and sustain wholeness.

As a therapist who often sits with anxious and depressed people I know that none of these questions instill the direly needed sense of peace an anxious person is yearning for. They do the opposite: they agitate, increase a strong sense of incongruousness of self (which is what brings so many people first into therapy anyway).

What an anxious person needs--and, really, what we all need--is acceptance. The Latin root of this word reminds us that its literal meaning is "taking to me." When I accept I take to me the thing/person I accept…like a small child we take to us and hold close to our heart to help it calm down, feel safe and relax.

I believe that there is so much we can do in the way of acceptance that has absolutely nothing to do with asking questions. Our eyes, our smiles, our tone of voice can signal acceptance in big ways. Often it is a good idea to let those come before we even ask any questions. The safe and solid base those signals can establish goes far beyond anything a question could ever achieve.