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Saturday, January 26, 2013

Too Many Beginnings

I just got done watching a movie tonight that I had never heard of, that I only clicked on for the title. That movie was Pumpkin, starring Christina Ricci. I love Pumpkin. Pumpkin pie. Pumpkin bread. Pumpkin muffins. Pretty much anything pumpkin related.

This movie I found myself loving from the beginning and I must claim it as a surprise Netflix gem.

But this movie got me thinking. Life has too many beginnings.

Let me explain. It's late and I'm probably making less sense than usual. What I mean is that, in life, there are phases. We all begin as cells, then we become babies, get born, turn into little kids, transition into pre-teens, then teens, then young adults, then adults, then senior adults, then we die. That's pretty much it, right?

In all that, we begin again. Over and over. Life has too many beginnings. We begin one thing and before that's over we begin something else. There is no closure. No ending.

I think, overall, that's the message the movie conveyed to me. The main character, she started out in life thinking one thing, but began to evolve over the course of the movie. She found herself beginning to change and that change scared her, that change she tried to force away but it kept coming. It eventually won out. Her previous way of life had been obliterated before her, by her own hand, and yet she was beginning a new way of living.

But I can't believe a new beginning ends anything. A new beginning is a beginning, it can't be an ending AND a beginning wrapped into one. This observation stems from personal experience more than anything. I have a bad case of writer ADD and I hardly finish anything. I begin plenty of things and jump between them.

I feel like life is the same way. I begin something and then begin something else. There is never any conclusion. All those beginnings pile on, and on, and on, and I wonder what they're all for.

What's the point of beginning something but never finishing it? That's what I ask myself all the time when I start a new story. I begin it, I'm enthused by it, and then it becomes just like any other story ... it eventually hits a point where I don't want to write for it nearly as much and I want something new.

It's a high, I think, a high that I get when I start a new story. When I have all the possibilities and choices before me, when nothing is set in stone.

I think that's the thing about life and all it's beginnings. Some of these beginnings are natural -- the ones that we grow into -- but some we force upon ourselves. Do we force these beginnings on ourselves to recapture that high from starting something new?

I think that's how it works for me. I don't know if that's how it works for anyone else.

But I'm tired of all those beginnings in life. Some of them are necessary but a lot of them I feel I just do to get that high.

Life has too many beginnings. I want ends.

Don't read into that as "OMG, HE'S SUICIDAL!!!" Please. I'm far too stubborn for that.

But I wonder what ends are waiting for me. Part of me believes it's got to be all bad stuff. Karma has a way of getting back at you and I've been ridiculously fortunate in life. There has to be some sort of payback, some sort of disaster, awaiting at one of those ends. Something I began will finally reach its end and I will suffer for it. 

Part of me believes that the beginnings and the ends, they don't matter. No matter how good or bad one or the other is, all that matters is what happens in the middle of the beginning and the end. It's the middle, the long stretch between those two points, that determines what happens to you. Whether you come away a better person or a worse one.

That's a scary thought in some ways. I feel like I'm in the middle of a lot of things right now ... and the decisions I make now will determine what path my evolution as a person takes. Better or worse.

I can't say with any certainty that I'm becoming one or the other.

But at least I'm aware of it. Maybe that shows something positive.

Thanks for listening folks. Good night.

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