Everything but why...

Watching a wasp cruise by while I was sitting on the deck first made me grateful that we hadn’t had as many this year, then made me think as always about the line from Dylan Thomas’s A Child’s Christmas in Wales, in which he remarks upon receiving a book that tells him “everything about the wasp but why.”

The same holds for scientific explanations of reality. We can conjecture concerning the mechanics of the Big Bang and come close to explaining how; we just can’t put our fingers on why.

Is the Universe here because Someone or -thing wanted it here? Does existence boil down to a volitional whim? If so, where did that whimsical entity come from? How did It amuse itself before touching off the BB? And where did It get Its sense of humor?

This is of course the hardest thing of all to wrap one’s mind around. Next to second-guessing death, it’s why we have churches. And considered too long, to the point where wrapping becomes unwrapped, it’s why we have loony bins.

So when it comes to contemplating the Universe, especially while gazing up at the night sky when it’s hard not to, it becomes a little crazy-making to ask why.

Better perhaps we should content ourselves with asking why not.