Your one “Why” Could Make You Much Smarter!

Tonight, I just observed that the moon tonight seems to be shifting westward so quickly like why is it in such a hurry?? Just a while ago, I saw it still hovering above my roof when the night was at its peak. This oddity sparked a curiosity within me which leading me to wonder what exactly was going on?

It turns out, it’s not the moon that’s rushing. It was me, I simply had not fully understood how the sky works. I discovered that the moon’s position in the sky changes from night to night. It shifts depending on its phase (crescent, half, full, and then waning again). A crescent moon, like the one I saw tonight, only appears briefly after sunset, then quickly sinks into the western horizon. Its screen time is short, yet its presence holds so many stories.

From a single "why," dozens of layers began to unfold. I learned about Earth's rotation, the moon's orbit, and how to read direction just by looking at the sky. It all started from one small moment: gazing at the moon and asking a question. This made me realize, “the best way to learn is to grow your curiosity about the subject.” When curiosity arises, learning no longer feels like a burden (tbh), but a journey to discover answers that satisfy both the mind and the soul. Sometimes, the answer itself even leads to more questions and that’s where the beauty lies.

I remember feeling the same kind of curiosity when I was learning math. One time, I saw the general equation of a circle:

x² + y² + Ax + By + C = 0.

At first, it looked truly confusing to me. I asked myself, “Why does a circle look like this in math?” It didn’t feel like a circle at all??? just random letters and numbers!? My teacher didn’t explain it clearly, so I decided to search on YouTube.

Thanks to that, I found videos that explained “completing the square,” and step by step, I started to understand. I finally saw how that equation actually shows the shape of a circle. Felt like I just solved a big mystery.

That one question helped me understand something I used to be scared of lmao. Perhaps that’s (also) why young children learn so quickly: because they never stop asking! And maybe, as adults, we just need to relearn how to ask. Not to appear knowledgeable, but because there’s genuinely something we long to understand more deeply.

Because even a single “why” can lead us to dozens of new insights.