Today I went for a walk in a park, I was feeling a little worn and figured the memories and places in the park would help to restore me. There was a certain stream and a certain waterfall that I particularly recall. A lovely spot, clean clear water cascading down over well worn rocks.

That's how I recalled it, at least.

The summer has been very hot, some people might say `unseasonably warm'. There has been talk of drought, and I have certainly noticed a distinct lack of the many rain showers that I used to think ruined summer days. Now I am finally beginning to realize just how much those rainy times helped create all the beauty and vibrant health I saw around me on those days past. After all, this trip that pretty little stream and waterfall was completely dried up.

Needless to say, this sight stunned me. At first I thought that maybe I was looking at the wrong place, that maybe my place was farther on up the trail. This dry dusty and dead bed of rock couldn't be that same revitalizing place I knew before.

Truth won me over, of course. It's hard to deny the truth for very long, it's too powerful, too insistent. Many people do, but look at all the pain they carry around inside of themselves for it. It was the same place, but instead of being the summer place, full of sparkling life, it was the winter place, withdrawing, keeping covered. Not showing its beauty but instead preparing for when the time might come that it would burst forth again. If that time comes.

I moved along to different places in the park, but all around me hints of decaying, of illness, seemed to pop up. Grasses and leaves were a light, brittle brown instead of a vibrant green. One-time swamps were dried to dusty earth. I just kept walking around hoping to find somewhere that seemed full of life.

I didn't quite manage to find it, I was too much involved in my disappointment and anger about the other place to be able to really look for and appreciate new ones. Why do people have to ask so many damn questions anyway? Scientists with all their discoveries have probably uncovered more problems then we ever had before they started poking through every little thing in the world. Why do we always feel a need to experience something, just so that we can know we never needed to? How many times have any of us done something really stupid and then later said, "Okay, that was foolish, but at least now I know"?

We ask and we ask and then we ask some more. It is just too much. For every answer our devious and intelligent little brains can make many more questions. Why can't we just ask, find an answer and then say, `Why not?' Are we so enveloped in the need to ask why that we can't turn it around and figure out for ourselves why not? Do we rely upon something to give us answers that much?

Questioning, asking Why, I think is good. Healthy. It can be taken too far though. When I start picking apart every little thing that someone says to me in order to defend my pre-conceived notions, that's when it's going too far. At that point it is nothing but stubbornness.

Reminds me of a neat story about a guy who was obsessed about becoming solid and sturdy enough so that nothing could harm him. And it worked, eventually, then he started to move to go somewhere, and found he could not move. He looked down and his legs had changed and merged with the stone he was standing upon. He had become too firm, too far out of balance in that direction. When you learn stability, you must also learn flexibility, they complement one another.

Why do we take the question `why' too far? I'm not sure, but maybe it's because we have to learn that we don't really need to know things as much as we sometimes feel we do. Maybe we have to question so much just to come to understand the benefit of accepting some things as they are. I mean, why not?