Why?

Why? The one question we all pose daily. We murmur this solitary word through tears and smiles, asking it with eyes full of longing and complete fulfillment. Regardless of station or situation this query haunts our thoughts. Maybe we all do not ask the same questions or follow the marks circulating in our minds and falling off our tongues with the next logical step: a hypothesis. But, as I view the small tract of earth that I have paused upon, it seems some do not even ask the question at all.

I know that a basic human flaw is to apply one’s self to the whole…use one’s self as a map of the masses, which inadvertently wraps those around you within the warm realm of familiarity…transferring one’s patterns, rationale, intelligence, curiosity, drive and values to others as one deems them as normal and therefore correct.

Which is where I feel my feet stick to the floor a bit, and the puzzle becomes more awkward for me. For it seems that not enough people question their surroundings. The complacent know the word, but it seems to be used as more of a tool for description, adding emphasis to woe or ecstasy. Or perhaps it is merely that to ask the questions means to commit to the search for their answers. Does that mean that the silent are satisfied with their lot? Does it imply laziness on the part of those who simply accept what lies before them without poking or prodding or changing their angle of view?

Why? Why am I who I am? Why are humans so easily misled? Why is it right for some to exist in bliss while conducting themselves in the most heinous of ways? Why are we weak? Why is language so subjective? Why does love avoid some while others cross it but do not see it for what it is? Why is being right often so painful? Why can I feel what others cannot seem to fathom? Why are we all here together and why do we all still feel so alone? Why do some profess the profound to hide their ignorant and confused sense of self? Why do others construct walls of solitude when what they offer could benefit multitudes? Why is it so hard? Why does fate tempt and time torture the romantic? Why is it better to judge the end by measure and not by means? Why is passion and longing cast as fleeting emotions created in uteri but then are thrown aside once the union has been born and begins to age? Why are some so talented at describing pain yet manipulate the empathy of others with it for personal gain?

Why am I ever pausing, catching my breath before I speak, especially to you? Why is it that some are not ready to hear what I have to say but I only want to shout it out above all of this droll noise? Why do I feel invisible some days? Why can’t you see what I see? Why don’t some people have the patience to pay attention to the important things? And why are the most important things always the most basic? Why is it always the easy road that the average person opts to traverse and why is it easier to blame the engineer of the road when we find it doesn’t take us to our desired destination?

Why?

If we or I were to continue with a specific subject here I could fill this book with questions about that one topic. What drives me onward is that I know I ask with the passion to seek the answers.

Why is faith questioned yet fact is blindly accepted? Even scientists reel at the observations and proven theories that have, in time, been revealed as flawed misconceptions and otherwise erroneous observations.

I do not profess to follow and organized public belief system, but I do know that I can and must question and respectfully acknowledge that which I cannot explain and that I am humbled by the knowledge that there is so much in this universe that falls into that category.

Why do I wake up when he enters the building four floors below me? Why does my head ring when you think of me? Why do I pick up my phone moments before you call? Why do I seem to sense more and more each day? Why does it seem more likely that spirit and the intangible soul do persist throughout time? Why can’t you understand? Why?

And the congregation replies, “Because it is not for you to understand, it simply is and always will be so.”

One must question else lose oneself to the paddock of the docile and feeble. If no one bothered to ask, how would change ever occur? Why is that? Does it then stand to reason that by questioning one is not satisfied with their surroundings? And does this lack of satisfaction diminish one’s place in sustaining the whole? For how can something be whole without being wholly satisfied? Ahhh…. The question that is applicable in macro and micro, universal and subatomic. Can a society be whole if it is not wholly satisfied? Can a culture? A family? Can I? Can my body? Can my soul? Can my heart? Can my love? Can my life? Can my world? Can my universe? And then we are back to the beginning…to the question why.

Why: The question that begins all and sometimes ends all… the word that is the origin of change… the word that precedes even us. The word that transports us to the next: how?