I have been staring at the dreaded blinking cursor at the top left corner of the empty page for some time. It has been asking me what I will put on the page. Questions like, "What?" and "When?" and the preeminent "Why?"

Actually, the blinking cursor is appropriate because it has sent me close to being a blinking cursor. Yes, it is about to make a preacher cuss!

Now for those of you who now me, it is not that I am at a loss for words; maybe a loss of meaningful, insightful words worthy of your time to read but I’ve got words.

You see the problem is in the questions the cursor is pulsating, beginning with the seminal one, "Why?"

I am not sure if it is the driving question of life or just the one a toddler poses every time something is asked of them. The parent says, “It’s time to eat, go wash your hands” or “put up your toys its time for bed” or "don’t climb on the top of the house” or “don’t play in the street or “eat your vegetables.” Almost without fail, before any real action is taken a little voice asks the question of the ages, “Why?”

It seems from 1 year to 100 years of age, that is the question that echoes and reverberates in our lives.

I recall a parent sharing her son’s answer to a question on a third grade test. The teacher asked why something happened. The boy’s reply was, “Because.” That was not the right answer. No doubt a frustrated parent had given that answer to an inquisitive child and it did not appropriately answer his question, either.

The parental “Because” does not register with the toddler mind any more than “Because I sad so” or “Because it is best for you.”

Victor Frankl, the Nazi concentration camp survivor, wrote a book published in 1946 entitled “Man’s Search for Meaning.” He is credited with identifying one of the driving forces in human existence, the drive or will to meaning. Freud had already identified the “will/drive to pleasure” and Adler had postulated our “drive/will to power.” Frankl says that we need to live lives of purpose and meaning, the why of life. He goes on to say when we understand the “why,” we can endure any “what.”

So here is the blinking cursor question of life, I think. Our lives are that empty white page. Each day begins with the cursor asking us, “What?" "When?” and more importantly, “Why?”

What will we write, when will we get around to it? One of the temptations and challenges in life is not to rush to “what” and “when” before asking, “Why?”

Frankl wrote, “"Woe to him, when the day of his dreams finally came, found it to be so different from all that he had longed for!" Another way of saying that is that it is tragic to have spent a life climbing to the top of the ladder only to realize the ladder was leaning on the wrong building.”

So, the page is about full. The cursor is blinking near the bottom of the page. This is true in a literal and figurative sense. We all know that pages can hold only so many words and life can have only so many "whats" and "whens."

So in a sense, each and all of us have the same opportunity as the blinking cursor asks over and over again, “What?" "When?" The story is written one moment, day, year and decade at a time until the pages are full and the book is written.

But before answering the “What?” and “When?,” be sure to ask the “Why?” question.