Mysteries That Are Unsolvable

Here’s a mystery for you:
Why do monarch butterflies return every year to the same couple of trees in a eucalyptus grove in California? How do they find their way to the same itsy-bitsy grove on a speck of land during their thousand-mile migration, with brains no larger than a pinhead?

Here’s another mystery:
Why do some elephant seals stop at the same teensy-weensy stretch of beach on the coast near my home? Is there the equivalent of an ocean off-ramp just for the handful of seals that might care? And how would you know, if you were an elephant seal, where exactly on this coastline you were born?

Americans love mysteries. We spend millions on thrillers every year. We do it for that “Ah-ha!” moment, when our suspicions are laid to rest and we know whodunit and why.
But “Ah-ha!” moments aren’t found only between the covers of a book. If you’re a seeker who asks questions, you can have the “Ah-ha!” experience all the time in real life.

In a week or so, some of us celebrate Epiphany, the date in the Christian church calendar commemorating what you might call the ultimate “Ah-ha!” moment: The Wise Men saw a Star and followed it to a stable in Bethlehem. My pastor calls it the moment when the light bulb goes on.
When my 75-year-old mother was reminded of Epiphany and its “Ah-ha!” moment, she said, “I have those every morning when I wake up.”
I walked around for days afterward trying to visualize what it’s like to say, “Ah-ha!” every day when my conscious mind becomes aware of life again. Hello, here I am again! What a nice way to live.

The Internet makes sleuthing fun, because search engines will pull up literally millions of web sites posing possible answers for any question a person cares to ask.
For example, why does a man pick a particular woman to love and cherish? Ask Jeeves at ask.com and you’ll get 8,486,000 possible answers, although you’ll sift through a boatload of stuff to arrive at books like “Women Men Love, Women Men Leave: Why Men Are Drawn to Women; What Makes Them Want to Stay.”
There are an awful lot of words in that title. No wonder it isn’t on the best-selling lists.

I wonder how many words have been written on the subject of love, or more specifically, on the attempt to explain the inexplicable mystery of why one man happens to love one woman for a very long time.
I asked my husband recently why he has loved me all these years, and he looked at me cockeyed. Then I discovered that he looks at me like I look at a good thriller. I’m a mystery for him to solve, in little bits at a time.

That day, he was taking down the Christmas lights, and at lunchtime I was reminding him of the old salt about HALT—don’t get too Hungry, Angry, Lonely, or Tired. My tongue tripped over the word “angry” and it came out “angle-y”—which must have made the light bulb go off for him.
He threw his arm around my shoulders and observed, “When you get hungry, you get all angle-y, and all your sharp parts stick out. You get real sensitive behind it.”
As I rolled around the driveway laughing, all I could think was: That’s real love, when somebody knows you get angle-y.
Then we shared a meatloaf sandwich, and he packed away the lights, and the real mystery is: Will we find them next Christmas?