Beginnings

Beginnings are exciting.

Moving to a new town, starting a new job, the first day of preschool, moving into the college dorm, the budding of a new relationship — all beginnings, all full of energy and expectation.

The beginning is a controlled pitch forward, embracing the unknown. Embracing risk. Maybe even chaos.

If you’re a “responsible” adult, you try to eliminate risk from your life. Risk is dangerous. It brings uncertainty. It could lead to disaster.

Beginnings are dangerous because they introduce chaos and uncertainty. Maybe it won’t go well, maybe something bad will happen.

Beginnings are how memories are made. The true danger is not that something bad might happen to us, but that we might get to the end and wonder where it all went.

Our minds use big changes as signposts. We find our ways through our own past by navigating through the map of memories created by changes. When one day is the same as the last, they blend together in a sort of memory soup without much to define one day from the next. And before you know it, a decade has passed, and you wonder where the time went.

Originally published at Ryan Crispin Heneise.