On 3/30/2011 3:19 PM, Marcus wrote:
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Magical Thinking ……
Why do we need a rational explanation for everything ???
Who said the universe must make sense ????
Does the ado of the last night sleep dream drama, have a sensible
explanation.
Does it have a nonsensical explanation.
The Universe, an inference akin the lingering impression left from a
story telling.....the lingering complete in itself,
as a display of what such a spectacle would be like, if such a spectacle
could ever be animated.
A shadow does not exists where it does not fall.
It also does not exist, where it does.
I was at the park with a friend, her daughter and her young grand
daughter, who was the ‘why’ stage of life.
As I sat talking with my friend, I overheard her grand daughter ask her
mother why I was in a wheel chair.
After gently shushing the young girl, she said in a subdued voice that
I’d had a stroke and couldn’t walk.
Of course the little girl asked, “Mommy,what’s a stroke?”
Erroneously believing that this old guy, who somewhat proudly jokes
about his being a crip, might be hurt or offended, the mother diverted
her daughter’s attention to a lady bug that had just landed in the
clumsy lady bug manner upon the grass.
As they both got down upon their knees to inspect the bug, it nestled
and disappeared in the deep grass.
Mother and daughter fingered the grass assiduously as they searched for
the lady bug, which they could not find.
Frustrated, the little girl asked the universal why kid question,
“Mommy, why is grass green?
Her mother proceeded to explain as simply as she could about how
sunlight comes down to the grass and something called
chlorophyll in the grass makes it look green; a standard struggling
answer parents give to this question when asked by their young children.
I too had burdened both my young boys with this complexity when they
asked that question, much to their glassy eyed confusion.
Understandably bored with this answer, that was way beyond her young
mind’s comprehension, the girl ceased looking for
the lady bug, got up, came over to me and asked, “Why did you have a
stroke?”
Not even the neurologists know the full the answer to that one, and I
answered, “Strange things happen and I just had a stroke, not even the
doctors know why.”
This seemed to satisfy the little girl’s curiosity and she ran off to
rejoin her beckoning mother.
This brief encounter got me thinking as she ran off that so often we
adults answer children’s ‘whys’ with ‘hows’.
That whole chloropyll rigamarol is not why grass green.
It is green because it’s green.
Young children will understand that answer because it’s the simple truth.
Does anyone truly know why grass is green?
I doubt it.
The sunlight/chlorophyll explanation is how the grass is green.
My neurologists spent days believing they were trying to figure out why
the first of my strokes occurred when in truth they were searching for
the causes of how it occurred.
Do any of us truly know why we had our brain injuries?
Sure we know how and many of us love to share our stories of that event
repeatedly in great ‘how by how’ detail of how the event happened, but
it certainly is not why.
Why did we get stroked? Why did the accident happen? Why did the scalpel
cut the wrong thing during the operation?
Who knows?
The more we stop believing the how is the why, the easier it is to
accept what is and move on just as this little girl did when she went
back to lady bug searching.
Think how glassy eyed and flummoxed she would have been had I gone
through the whole routine of blood clots, artery blockages and brain
bleeds that would have in no way explained why I got stroked.
The incident did get me thinking that all the why questions of a child
are a young soul’s first steps on it’s life quest for meaning in life
.......and we adults blunderingly muddy up the waters with answers of
how life happens ...
...and thus misguidedly teach them that how their lives happen is why
their lives happen.
