Alternative title: Of Whys and Why Nots
I slept in and woke up at noon, made an espresso, and sat at the desk to solve several crosswords, a habit I have immensely enjoyed these past months. It did not take me much time to fill the boxes with the correct letters, and then I started to think about how I have been asked “why” more often than I have asked it myself. I do not want to think about what it indicates about me. There are questions for noon, and there are questions for midnight.
But at least I can do some inventory.
I have not asked “why” for these crosswords, nor have I asked it for the daily game of chess I play despite never improving at it. I have never asked why for why I exercise or walk. I only want to keep myself moving. It is, perhaps, as simple as that, but most people do not seem to look at it this way. The money I invest is also meaningless in that I do it because what else will you do with it, or that, in some sense, it is the right thing to do if you cannot find a better use for it. There are, of course, better uses all around, and when I have some money, it goes to them first. Then, what is left gets put into different places where it grows ever-so-slightly. There is also no particular reason why I want it to grow. It is, again, better than not letting it do so, and this somewhat logical idea is my sole reasoning. As for why I read (read: try to), there is again no answer, nor is there any for why I love profusely.
My life has now become a sequence of rhetoricals—why I drink coffee, why I sit here and write endlessly when there are, I imagine, better uses of my time, why I refuse to let the child in me die, why I refuse to draw lines over the world, why I strictly take every little thing in this world at face value, why I believe that most people can be better than they currently are, why I try to look for a better future in the bleak fog of time or a better tomorrow, if future is too grandiose an expectation, or why, while knowing the ins and outs of human nature, while knowing, firsthand, the personal tragedies I have faced simply because it did not exist, I argue for our will to make the right decisions at the right times—all of these carry the same answer.
“Why not?”