I write this on the night of a new moon––a beginning. After spending an evening on the water, I had time to gaze into the violet sky just after sunset to watch the sliver of the silver moon appear faintly at first. Beautiful, she spoke to me about the wisdom of beginnings and how they can start small.
We don’t always spot beginnings. But we always know when something ends. Beginnings can sometimes seem almost too good to be true. We don’t want to believe that something different has started because that leaves us vulnerable to that something’s end. To acknowledge a beginning is to live in the tension of what will be, to live in hope.
In the beginning, we can ask so many questions. How long will it last? Should I even try? What if this doesn’t work out? If we let fear rule we can sometimes miss beginnings, or not feel their joy fully. Instead, choose to revel in the beauty of the unknown.
Wisdom says that the new moon is the ideal time for new beginnings. So let’s begin together today. What is beginning in your life? Let yourself feel the joy of it more than the uncertainty. Has something begun? Take a minute to feel your aliveness. Because life isn’t for safety and known courses. Life is for the living. For starting and stopping and knowing through the process of several beginnings’ ends that they are all teachers and friends.
Beginnings can make all things new if you let them. They can be about leaving the pain behind. They can be as small as the sliver of a new moon and actually might even look like an ending. Trust in their magic. Think with positive intentions toward them blooming abundantly instead of placing past hurts and fears on them. Treat them like you would the most sacred of friends. Every beginning is a new relationship with promise and hope.
To me, there’s nothing more beautiful than the magic of beginnings––a first love, first date, first day at school, first day in a new home, cradling a new baby, opening day of a new business, a new year, a new project, a new hobby or activity! How much happiness beginnings can bring to life if we simply become aware and allow them space to become. And how much sorrow we can alleviate in our endings if we simply give beginnings more power.
I believe there’s no ending without a beginning that directly follows.
I’d like to dedicate this post in honor of my son as he’s facing a new beginning this Friday in London at his new university where a new journey awaits him––remembering this week, as we all share in new beginnings, the importance of choosing to enjoy the beauty of our beginnings and disregard the disappointments of endings. The key? Trust the magic of beginnings even when you can’t see past an end.
What might be the end, in your opinion … is actually another beginning!
S.C.