Ask Him Why

by Catherine Ryan Hyde

As long as I live, I’m never going to do what they’re doing. I made myself a promise. And now I’m making the promise to you. I’m never going to judge somebody I don’t know. And if somebody is accused of something in the newspaper or on TV, I’m going to remember that maybe he did it or maybe he didn’t. I wasn’t there, so I don’t know.

I decided I would be strong, not because I had to be, not because they had used up all the weakness, but because strong was what I wanted for myself.

it doesn’t take long to change your life—at least, not when you finally get around to it.

And it’s a funny thing, this being seen. Everybody’s looking for it, and nobody would go through that fence if they hadn’t given up on finding it. But once they get it . . . well, it seems to go one o’ two ways.

They either grab onto it like a life preserver and never want to let it go . . . and that’s those in the photos, the ones that went on to be a part of our lives.

“But then there’s the other kind. They’re not used to being seen. They want it but they don’t want it. It’s like bright sunlight. You live in the dark all your life, you want nothing more than to step out into that warm sun. But then it hurts your eyes because it’s too bright. It burns you.

People can bear almost any amount of pain if they think there’s an end to it.

And besides, all the bad things in the world start with people trying to see the world as simpler than it is. Trying to change the way life is and failing—like me thinking I could save my little brother, whether he wanted saving or not, instead of just saving me.

He says the part that’s driving us crazy is trying to fix a future that isn’t even here yet. He says when it gets here, then we can figure out how to get through it. But now it’s just driving us crazy because it’s all unknown. So we just have to stay in the moment we’re in.

Take things on one moment at a time.”

“Good to get the truth out into the air,” Ham said. “Everything grows best in oxygen and sunlight except secrets and guilt and regrets. They like the dank spaces. Drag them out into the light and they fail to thrive.”

“I couldn’t go out gunning for a bunch of young men who were more or less the Iraqi equivalent of my own little brother.”