Why do we linger?

This one is personal.

It should also be short. I am asking a question that I can't answer.

We tend to lose perspective when certain things befall us. We start with, "why me?" But when we look around a bit, the question becomes, "why not?"

HEAT...

I hate the heat. Always have. Don't know why tourists pick Cancun this time of year. It's miserable. Most of my adult life in this climate, and my body is still wired for northern Wisconsin subzero winters. After a walk, even the sweat-drenched shoes go in the wash.

Heat irritates me, oppresses, exhausts, incites… makes me impatient, impulsive. Reminds me of Albert Camus's, "The Stranger".

The sun was starting to burn my cheeks, and I could feel drops of sweat gathering in my eyebrows. That sun was the same as it had been the day I’d buried Maman, and like then, my forehead especially was hurting me, all the veins in it throbbing under the sun. It was this burning, which I couldn’t stand anymore, that made me move forward. I knew that it was stupid, that I wouldn’t get the sun off me by stepping forward. (1.6.24)

So he blamed the heat, too. It was one of the factors in the inevitability of the killing. And of course, "stepping forward" with it brought no relief.