Why?
Twenty years ago or more, I heard an anecdote about a philosophy teacher who gave an exam with one question: Why?
According to the anecdote, the one student who received a 100% score answered that question with this question: Why not?
The story rings differently to me now, in this century when trite, deep thoughts are a dime a dozen, passed around the internet with cutesy memes, gifs, and video, but I still remember it from that time in the mid-1990s when the internet was new and people still wrote each other letters by hand.
Why not indeed? Mathematical and physical laws aside, it does seem like there could be anything here instead of us, instead of this world. Trees could grow toward the dark, gravity could pull things up, the sun could set in the east and rise in the west. The moon could be made of cheese, or calcium, or flesh and bone.
These possibilities, alternative realities, are the stuff of imaginative fiction, and they make it worthwhile to get up every morning, because the possibilities and promises of change keep life interesting. Not knowing how the world will rock before the sun goes down tonight keeps me on my toes and entices me to pay attention and throw myself into action on the odds that my choices, words and deeds today will contribute to the outcome.
- Alex
