We’re wired to ask why — here’s what we’re really searching for

With frustration and fascination, I’ve come to begrudgingly accept that the questions I’m most interested in surface when I’m least equipped to answer them. Lights off, eyes closed, the pull of sleep growing stronger — a memory flashes across my mind. As I sink into it, the images turn into questions: _Did I mess that up at work?

What did they mean by that? Did I make the right decision?_ During my most recent late-night ruminations, I turned over the confusing behavior of someone I just met. We hit it off at first, and I was excited about the prospect of a new friend.

Then, out of nowhere, they pulled away and stopped answering texts or reaching out to make plans — the all-too-familiar phenomenon of “ghosting.” I couldn’t help but wonder what happened, and I don’t mean that as a figure of speech. I literally _could not help_ but wonder, my brain looping through the same events over and over again, more intent on solving this mystery than getting a good night’s sleep. _Why did they pull away? What did I do wrong?_ And, of course: _Why am I thinking about this at midnight?_ This strong impulse to make sense of things can be useful, but it can also be incredibly annoying, perplexing, even counterproductive.

But according to cognitive scientist Tania Lombrozo, it’s just as human. But they wouldn’t challenge the significance of explanation for our species. It has its own warp and weft in the tapestry of what it means to be us.” Lombrozo appeared on my screen with a warm, wide smile and dark, wide-rimmed glasses, seated in front of a tidy, and packed bookshelf — a fitting backdrop for someone who has spent a career studying curiosity, how we learn, and how we explain the world to ourselves and to others.

I couldn’t resist the obvious, slightly on-the-nose question: _Why_ write this book? What do we need to know about our own curiosity that we don’t already know intuitively? That benefits us in obvious ways.” Like learning how to stop ruminating in the middle of the night, I thought.

The world is complicated. We can even mislead ourselves. I wanted to give people the tools to know when to follow that impulse and when to redirect it.” The question “why” may appear as an outward search to find something that exists outside of ourselves, an answer.