Why are women always described as 'desperate,' while men are just... irrational?

Why are we worn out? Why do we, who start out so passionate, brave, noble, believing, become totally bankrupt by the age of thirty or thirty-five? Why is it that one is extinguished by consumption, another puts a bullet in his head, a third seeks oblivion in vodka, cards, a fourth, in order to stifle fear and anguish, cynically tramples underfoot the portrait of his pure, beautiful youth? Why is it that, once fallen, we do not try to rise, and, having lost one thing, we do not seek another? Why?

Why are we working so hard to preserve Iraq, a fake country to begin with? Why do we care whether this fake country that was drawn on the map 100 years ago remains?

Why are we trying to measure social media like a traditional channel anyway? Social media touches every facet of business and is more an extension of good business ethics.

Why are we tiptoeing on glass? You can ask me whatever you like; people usually do, and I try to be as honest as I can.

Why are we talking about talking? Why negotiating about negotiating? It's very simple. If you want to get to peace, put all your preconditions on the side, sit down opposite a table, not in a studio, by the way.

Why are we such tortured human beings, with tears in our eyes and false laughter on our lips? If you could walk alone among those hills or in the woods or along the long, white, bleached sands, in that solitude you would know what meditation is. The ecstasy of solitude comes when you are not frightened to be alone no longer belonging to the world or attached to anything. Then, like that dawn that came up this morning, it comes silently, and makes a golden path in the very stillness, which was at the beginning, which is now, and which will be always there.

Why are we so terrified of a natural process that allows for life to be brought into this world? Why do we scramble to hide our tampons when we pull them out of our purses?

Why are we so terrified for God to speak to us? It is because we know that when God speaks we must either do what He asks or tell Him we will not obey.

Why are we so obsessed with monogamous fidelity?

Why are we so obsessed with celebrity culture? We have front-page news about divorces instead of front-page news about global warming, about women being abused, about children being abused. We're going on a downward spiral.

Why are we so attached to the severities of the past? Why are we so proud of having endured our fathers and our mothers, the fireless days and the meatless days, the cold winters and the sharp tongues? It's not as if we had a choice.

Why are we so addicted to factual knowledge? Why are we so uncomfortable with the unknown? Is it something about the anxiety of our time? Because of course that wasn't always the way. Even now the whole idea of the rational individual has been subject to question and yet we still cling to this idea of factual, rational knowledge being more valuable than whatever its opposite might be.

Why are we sitting? Why are we practicing? Why are we doing anything? It's not so I can be happy. It's so I can embody the dharma in order to benefit other beings.

Why are we seeing George Bush on TV every two hours for nine or ten days at a time, like some kind of mutated Mr. Rogers clone? Something is dangerously wrong in any country where a monumentally-failed backwoods politician can scare our national TV networks so totally that they will give him anything he wants.

Why are we scared of a '50s weepie? Why are we scared of a movie that pulls you in and punches you in the stomach?

Why are we rock stars? Because we're morons. We sleep all day, we play music at night and very rarely do we sit around reading the Washington Journal.

Why are we rebuilding New Orleans? Whose idea was this, Aquaman?

Why are we reading, if not in hope of beauty laid bare, life heightened and its deepest mystery probed? Can the writer isolate and vivify all in experience that most deeply engages our intellects and our heats? Can the writer renew our hope for literary forms? Why are we reading if not in hope that the writer will magnify and dramatize our days, will illuminate and inspire us with wisdom, courage, and the possibility of meaningfulness, and will press upon our minds the deepest mysteries, so we may feel again their majesty and power?