If one question best defines the human race, it is "Why?" We are always required to give an occurrence meaning. An avalanche wipes out a village. "Why did it happen?" A car accident claims the life of a loved one. "Why?" From time immemorial we have asked this question.
Why? Because. Because that is our life. Human beings are defined by three things, and all of them are characteristics.
We are defined by our capacity to love, to care, to extend beyond ourselves and offer some small measure of comfort to someone who is in pain, though they are a perfect stranger.
Our ability to question: to reason, to think, to conclude from evidence that one idea or another is correct. This is the basis of the question Why?, the question that so consumes us.
And last, but certainly not least, what makes us human is that we have so many different ways to feel pain. To hurt. To cry. To suffer.
Is this truly a necessary capacity? Perhaps. Without the third characteristic, the first could not manifest itself; and so we would lose not one part but two parts of the human experience. Yet the pain of life is sometimes too much to bear, even for the strongest among us. And so we lose people to grief. Why?
Because that is the cost of being human.
-David
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