Which moment marks the part of our lives when we learn to live, and which milestone is the beginning of the end?  When does the present pass us by and become the past? When does the long-anticipated future become the present? When does the future become nonexistent?  

I can tell you what the beginning is not. It is not some guaranteed gift to be received at any specific age; it does not exist to present itself only for special birthdays, and it won’t come to someone just because they reached their Lucky Thirteen, Sweet Sixteen, Adult Eighteen, or Legal Twenty-One.  Your life doesn’t necessarily start when you attend your first junior high dance or the day you lose your “virginity” (whatever that is).  Graduations and loves gained and lost are not always markers of commencement either.  The preliminary point is one that must be granted at the perfect time and, more importantly,

Earned. 

The end, too, is not determined by age.  A thirtieth, fortieth, fiftieth, or eightieth birthday does not stand dauntingly in the future, marked on some divine calendar as the day your life terminates.  Blowing out a few candles on a cake after many decades, when matching the number of candles with your age is too expensive, time-consuming, and space-obliterating, does not indicate the end of living or some “beginning of the end.”  The day you first lean on a walking stick is not this definite moment that commences your biding of time until your demise finally arrives on your doorstep, suitcase in-hand. 

The end can be death…

But it does not have to be.

The beginning and the end are similar in another way as well; you cannot identify them until long after that monumental moment or phase has passed, when you’re afraid you’re drawing nearer to the close, or when you’re already right by it and nostalgic for the beginning. 

The irony is that when we crave the days when our lives began or dread the day when they will end, we forget that we are still alive and living.  If you can pinpoint the beginning, then you’ve already lived it, and if you’re not dead, then you haven’t approached the end unless you have predeceased yourself. Therefore, you’re alive until you’re not.  Whether you don’t begin living until “later on” in life, or whether you commit mental suicide before your heart even beats its final beat, there is still life waiting between these markers as long as you believe there is.  That’s why a twenty-year-old can jumpstart their life at that two-decade marker, whereas a forty-year-old can experience living for the first time after already “existing” for a near half-century. That’s also why a thirty-year-old can feel dead inside as they run through the mandatory motions, whereas a seventy-year-old can continue to live life to the fullest for many years to come.  That’s why some people discover the thrills of life in childhood while others, quite tragically, will never experience the sensation that comes with truly living.

To grieve for a beginning behind us and far beyond our reach, or even to mourn an ending that will arrive unannounced whenever it so pleases, is entirely useless when we already have everything we could ever need within ourselves. 

Anytime we find the life from within us leaking out of our weak bones, or we become self-conscious of our physical decay, we can guide our spirit back to the time when we first discovered how to be alive. This is why that memory burns brightly within us: to behave as a bright torch on a long, winding path that we can always gaze back at to see how far behind us the beginning is, and to measure our progress ever since.  The flame we swallowed when we had to leave that opening torch behind still roars within us until the moment we pass away, or until the time we choose to extinguish it.  Unlike the beginning, the end does not have a burning emblem to symbolize the finish line; we simply have not yet reached that point and, therefore, we cannot yet transfer the ambers from the beginning to the unlit torch at the end.

And, as for that unlit torch… 

It is not lit by another for us to see before we reach it; when we notice the endpoint, we begin to embark on our journey to self-annihilation long before it has even arrived.  That torch waits patiently for us, remaining flameless until the very moment we have exhausted our bodies from living, and our physical form finally relents; pending that, however, the fire remains within us.  And, when we do eventually meet death, we expel this flame onto the torch at that finishing line.

And, that is the very flame, conceived at and by the beginning itself, that carries us Onwards into the next chapter of our existence, the glorious realm that can only be as long as it is free from the restrictions of Father Time and Mother Universe. Here, we will discover the marvels that occur only after our human lives have already flickered out. 

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