Start
To start is to begin. Start is a barrier sometimes. Start feels impossible sometimes. Start is like the New Year resolution that just won’t settle down to something I can get enthused about. There it is, to start needs some enthusiasm. Start is not a solitary pillar. Start needs supporting braces like big beams and guy wires in order to hold it up until the cement at its base can set. Start needn’t be a four letter word
What kind of cement do we need to ‘set’ the start into motion? I, for one, need to be at least a little bit confident that what I am proposing to start is going to be somehow ‘good’. I can start to make a cake or I can start a war. What I use to start each of those is different and the consequences are certainly different too. So some of those supporting braces need to convince me it will all be OK
There is the start and there is the starter. We can start lighting up the house for Christmas by starting the first candle by striking the first match by starting to walk toward the place we keep the matches etc. ‘Start’ is a beginning for sure, but where/when does it actually begin?. Somewhere, somehow, the seed of the idea that leads to the start, starts. So, how, exactly do we start things?
Some say the Universe was started at the moment of the Big Bang. Some say the Big Bang started at the speaking of ‘the Word’. Some wonder about what happened before that? Part of the annoyance with the phrase ‘it is what it is’ may arise from a frustration about the true beginnings of whatever we are talking about. We like to know how/when things started. Do we really want to start a search into this?
We have many structures around the event we call the start. The start time is an example, as is the starting line or the starting gun. Fun thing is that whatever it is we are referring to had started a long time before. If it didn’t then the event would likely not occur. No preparation can equal no event. Then of course we have ‘surprises’, those seemingly spontaneous events that start all by themselves. But do they?
Joseph Seiler