Beginnings

Pema Chödrön says that sometimes you have to let things fall apart. When I think of things falling apart, I usually think of endings, but beginnings also have a sense of not being held together. Not holding together just means that it is falling apart. When you relocate, start a new project, look for a new job, begin a new relationship, the first step you take to begin is one step. You don’t know what the following narrative is going to be and even if you had planned out all the phases that will follow, the step does not guarantee your plan.  

Before you take that first step, you achieve something profound. You are forced to be comfortable with the fact that your life is not held together, that it is falling apart, even if the situation poses only a minor inconvenience to you. You are swimming in what seems to be like a deep reservoir of anxiety. You accept that you are in the water. You accept that you cannot touch the ground. Even if you are able to touch the edge of the reservoir, you accept that the earth that you touch seems to crumble in your hands. You cannot hold neither the water nor the earth together and that is okay. They are elements that are not supposed to be held.