Why?

Why?

It is the single, arguably most powerful, question in the human vocabulary. It is a single word, resting perpetually on the fringe of my mind's eye, ready to leap into action, ready without prompting to spring from merely a word to a powerful quest for answers, often answers we are unable to achieve.

Why?

There are so many things I do not know or understand. I want to know why. Why did I get ALS? Better yet, why does a beautiful, young, otherwise healthy 23 year old get ALS and die within a matter of months, while I live on? Why does a 19 year old boy here in Calgary, or an 8 year old boy in Los Angeles, get ALS, progressing to the point where they depend on breathing apparatus and feeding tubes, while I chow down on a steak for dinner?

Of course there is the more existential question of why. Why am I here at all? Other than mere biology, my sense of humanity says there must be a reason. Yet there is none that I can as yet uncover. Why am I me, this person and personality? Surely we should, by now, be able to uncover that balance of nature and nuture which forms each of us, and yet we can not. We don't know why.

There are so many things that leave us grasping in the ether, that ethereal space of our conciousness, between awareness and blackness. Why do flowers grow up while roots grow down? How do they know what to do? Why do we strive, competing for love and affection when the battlefield of human relations is strewn with the casualties of our emotional war? Why do we keep going, why do I keep going, when all logic and reason tell me there is no point to it all? I don't know; I just do.

It's easy to see why humankind has turned, and still turns, to dieties of all sorts to explain the things we don't understand, to answer the unaswerable why. We, as a species, constantly seek answers and explanations. We are animals of cause and effect, curious always. We are forever allowing that word to come out from the shadows, to dominate the light of our thoughts, driving us to exploration, experimentation, examination. We all want to know why.

For myself, I have reached a place where I am comfortable, mostly, with the simple idea that I don't know why, that I will likely be unable to ever answer that ponderousity, that elephant in the living room. I don't know why, and I am okay with that. I just am. It just is. Maybe one day we will know why, but for me, for now, for today, I can live without an immediate answer.

Peace, internal and steady, comes from acceptance that you may not know why, that it doesn't really matter if you do or don't. Let your curiousity drive you to search for answers. Let your heart be still when you realize you may not find one. Push to learn, to constantly find out why. And when you are done, live in the grace that you have learned what you can, and accepted that you cannot know it all.