Monday, November 27, 2006

Don't even get me started

In the beginning there was nothing. God said, 'Let there be light!' And there was light. There was still nothing, but you could see it a whole lot better. ~Ellen DeGeneres

All beginnings are hard, or so they say, especially for us animals of habit. As my high school economics teacher said: "learning is painful". Growth is painful. Beginnings are the worst. Everything seems bigger, insurmountable, or at the very least peculiar. Odd and out of place. I remember starting university in a different city, travelling to a different continent, and moving into a new room. It's the feeling that a dense lake of possibilities comes flooding in, and even though you have some faith that you can swim, you have no idea how deep the water is under your feet. You stretch your left leg without letting your head submerge and if you don't scrape your foot or knee you still have no clue. It's the feeling of meeting someone with the same density as your imagination, someone who changes like the Dutch sky on a November afternoon. Or standing at the foot of a lighthouse, looking up and thinking, against better judgment and past experience, that it will fall over right on top of you, yet not being able to stop looking up. Definitely beginnings are like that.