While there are useful why? questions, most concerning our personal plights aren't particularly useful. They all too often end up in self-pitying category of why? questions such as, why me? Why did they, he, she, it, you, do this or that to me?

These why? questions seldom serve us well because they confine us to a limited outlook, cut off from perspective and scope. These self-pitying questions most often re-open or keep open wounds that, left alone, heal themselves. They most often represent an intense preoccupation with self at the expense of any greater picture of ourselves and our lives, and they only open and prolong our preoccupation with blame.

Acceptance is a lovely antidote for useless why questions.

When we're accepting ourselves just as we are, we're getting on with the matter of living our lives as they unfold in the present moment. We're free to effect bold changes in ourselves that previously seemed impossible without demoralizing backsliding, because we're not holding out an impossible picture of ourselves.

When we start accepting other human beings just as they are, we further and deepen our own self-acceptance as human beings among other human beings, free from the distortions of grandiosity and self-pity.

We're not demoralized by a step back when we accept that sometimes it's the only way we can go forward.

When we accept our essential wholeness, we know that every detail of our lives reveals that whole, whether or not it is immediately apparent in the view from our tiny window of consciousness. We learn to step out in confidence, not the flashy confidence of arrogance or blind obstinacy but rather the quiet confidence of knowing we are always whole beings in an encompassing picture.

It may seem we've tumbled down and backwards on our climb up the mountain. Yet, even as we realize we're bumped and bruised, we can also realize that we have a new opportunity to give our attention to what we might have missed on our first attempt at the climb.

When we accept ourselves fully, we let go of our need to ask useless questions. We can get on with our lives free to look at what we see, free to listen to what we hear, free to step out with first one foot and then the other in the simplicity of living our whole life right here and right now.