''He who asks a question(why) is a fool for five minutes; he who does not ask a (why)question remains a fool forever.''

''People going through a hard time need

consolation more than they need an

explanation.''

(Harold S. Kushner)

Though most of us may go through our most intense

''why?'' phase during our pre-school age, usually

we ''grow out of it''.

But is that really a good thing?

If we grow out of asking why then how will

we keep growing and developing a deeper

understanding of what being a human is?

Asking ''why?'' is in my view paramount to and 

the beginning

of how we make sense of who we are, what we are 

doing here and for what purpose.

Some have suggested that more than anything

else mankind fear uncertainty. I have read this

many times but where does this statement

come from and is it true as in; is it a fact?

Deep diving the statement it seems to me that

rather than being a ''certainty/fact'' 

the first mention of the statement comes from

 ''The Epic of Gilgamesh'' c. 2100 BCE.

Quote: ''There is no permanence - .................

From the very beginning, nothing has been

certain.''

According to those in the know, asking ''why'' is

an internal human driving force that for survival

and flourishing purposes, the human

 needs to know and understand the cause and effect

of things happening.

(If I do xyz what happens then?)

Take coffee for instance.........how many humans

had to go through ''taste testing'' with dire results

before they discovered exactly what a coffee bean

looked like and what had to be done to it in order

to make a delicious cup of coffee?

Asking ''why?'' is probably one of the most

important questions(if not THE)us humans have 

ever come up with.

How so? Because it urges us to look for answers,

 reasons and solutions to quandaries we face.

 Mankind learned early on that survival

very much depended on knowing things

such as living things has a life span.

I sometimes ponder all the humans who 

have died while in the pursuit of finding out

what they can consume and what they can't

if they want to survive.

Though we may not be able to say that we know

for a fact(empirical)that all things living 

will eventually reach its expiry date,

 experience however strongly suggest that it does.

Which brings me to the subject for this post:

Loss and how hard we find to deal with.

When I was told that my best friend

had driven off the road, up a tree

and subsequently instantly died,

my first words were: WHY?!!!!!!

A few years later my then best

friend died of a heart attack at 43 years

old........again: WHY?!!!!!

In the turbulence and absolute crushing

heartache that followed each loss, I realized

that I had to find a way to cope, to accept

that none of us are getting out of this

we call Life......... alive.

I stopped with the ''WHY's'' and decided

to focus on kindness and consolation.

The position of having been the ''best friend''

seemed to somehow be comforting for the

wives and kids my friends left behind, so

I decided that I was going to become

the best possible consoler that I could be 

....... for them.

Day and or night, for as long as they needed me.

I found my own consolation in: music,

reading, writing, painting, photography,

walking, running, swimming, cycling,

thinking, but more than anything else.....

Challenging my thinking and developing my

critical thinking and self-reflection skills.

And it began with......you're right! asking:

WHY?

Why do I think this way?

Why am I feeling this way?

Which lead to asking myself:

Are there other ways of thinking about this?

Other ways of feeling about this, other words

 to describe/define this?

Maybe instead of trying to solve/fix this,

are there other possible ways of

interpreting this situation?

[Thus begun a serious devouring of innumerable

(and still counting) books and hours of research 

into Philosophy, Psychology and everything

to do with the mind and consciousness.]

''He who asks a question(why) is a fool for

five minutes; he who does not ask

a (why)question remains a fool

forever.''

(Chinese proverb with my additions)

about the image: ink on paper title: Dried flowers