Why?
It is indeed one of the most intriguing and fundamental inquiry about everything around us. It is the question that provokes a chain of thought processes in our mind. I believe this is the single most important question and the biggest reason behind almost all the inventions. Looking behind the discovery of many phenomena and inventions in the history of mankind, we can realize that the inventor was curious to find why something happened. Why did the apple fall towards the earth and not the other way around? Why do the planets revolve around the sun? Why do opposite poles attract? Why do you get attracted to the opposite sex? Why the small tin can got charged after lightning? Why the lid vibrated when the water started boiling? Why did it sparked when two rocks were rubbed against each other? Why is the sky blue? Why does it rain? Why does something smell bad? Why does it hurt when you poke with a pin? Why is fire hot? Why why why why....
Many a times the questions seems so mundane and cliché. The sky has been blue since we started seeing it. Every little thing has been falling towards the earth from the beginning. It was made like that. Unless and until you go beyond the common thinking process, we won’t come up with an answer. For this we need to ask the right question and ask why the answer was that way. Why is it that the things have been falling down from the beginning? There you have your multibillion dollar question.
If you start with one of the question that pokes in your mind it starts off a chain of whys. For example: Why do I need go to college? To gain knowledge. Why do I want to gain knowledge? To get a good job. Why do I want a good job? So that I could earn a good living. Why do I need a good living? To have peace of mind. Why do I need peace of mind? To keep myself happy. Why do I need to be happy? So that I feel better. Why do you want to feel better?????.....
It is a vicious circle or a never ending pursuit and it can go on for a while... It is hard to get to an end. May be trailing these never ending questions we could find the purpose of life and may be reason behind the universe. Even that is another "Why"? Why was this universe created? Every single entity around us has the ability to invoke that curiousness within us. Understanding the reason behind it amuses us. It gives logic to the wonder that the question pokes into our mind. I believe that is what makes mankind different; the free will and the ability to reason. Why should I choose this option and not the other one? Why does this option seem to be more pleasurable than the other option?
Still some of us don't think. We assume that things are like that. It is much easier to enjoy the phenomena and not think about it. It is easier to use a touchscreen and not think why it doesn’t work with a pen or a pointed stylus. A child asks that very same question to you and then you wonder why I haven’t thought of the same question. I have been using this gadget for a long time but it never occurred to me.
While growing up ourselves, we shed that inquisitiveness on the way somewhere. Every child grows up with an insatiable curiousness. The child wants to learn the meaning about everything. It reasons everything. Though the elders feel it to be stupid, as one of my professors said, there are no stupid questions. But there could be a stupid answer. On the contrary, I have seen many elders make fun of these "little queries". "How stupid of you to ask me that?" they say. And thus you create a barrier to the chain of thoughts. The child thinks it is indeed bad to ask such questions. I should probably be dumb enough to ask that question. He will think twice before asking the next question. The sheer inquisitiveness of a child is inhibited and as we grow older, we constrict our thinking to the simple daily chores. A child never gets bored. Even a piece of newspaper in waiting room makes him involved. He wonders what all he could do with that little piece. The magazines arranged in various ways become a small tent or a shed for him. The "little men" could find shelter under that. The moment we are stuck in a room for 5 mins, we get impatient. We don't analyse the room. We don't observe and ask a why question. We won’t even stop for a second to make a simple observation on the shoes of the fellow patient sitting in the lobby. May be that is why the older we get, the more we get bored.
A recent study shows that the major reason for Alzheimer’s disease is the lack of invigoration in the mind. The mind gets bored with the lack of activity. We think of mundane stuffs again and again, making only a small part of our brain active all the time. Another professor of mine used to say in his class to us. Every living creature on earth has got a specific feature that characterizes it. We could put them into individual boxes and cluster together. The moment the species fails to follow its “duty”, it doesn’t belong in this biosphere. The moment butterflies stop taking nectar from the flowers and induce pollination it doesn’t deserve to be in the food chain. For mankind it is the ability to think. Unless we use it, we don’t deserve to be in the “box”. We may better fit in a “primate’s box”. Indeed in many places in the Qur'an, the Almighty asks the reader 'do they not think,' 'do they not ponder,' or 'reflect'. Unfortunately neither do we think nor do we enquire about the musings to those who are knowledgeable.
