How It Begins

By Emily D'Addieco

We breathe our first breaths 

into a seemingly unpredictable setting. 

Blinding lights rip away 

the security of gestational comfort and darkness. Screaming and bloody, 

birthed into a pristine hell— 

looks like everyone else forgot this is how it starts. 

Never to be held by the unknowing 

of having not started a single thing again. 

Ready, set, go. 

…but to where? 

With who? 

Why even try? 

Instructions not included 

should’ve been the disclaimer that came with consciousness. 

Every coming day— 

an incessant nag to survive. 

The chances of making it 

depend only on mere mortals, 

as you discover yourself to be 

as well. 

So they teach us about god(s). 

Or perhaps they don’t. 

Either way, the flood comes: 

Real life. 

Accept it or drown. 

Or just skate by.

Some learn earlier than others 

just how cruel 

it can be. 

But eventually… 

one way or another, 

Everyone learns. 

And so— 

the beginning was in the end, 

as was the end within the beginning. 

Every day bled into the next… 

and life continued. 

Punctuated by sadness, 

happiness, 

grief and loneliness, 

ecstasy and love. 

Every day just kept happening— 

as it always has, 

as it always will. 

We argue over a defined beginning of all life: The Big Bang, 

the seven (or eight?) days of creation… We know it started somehow. 

We prove it in different ways. 

But is how it started 

so much as important 

as the fact that it has started? 

Why are we not more in awe of that? 

—of the pure chance of all of this— 

the entropy and chaos 

of an endless universe 

which led to these specific conditions? 

Calculate the probability 

of you sitting here reading this… 

of me typing it. 

You might have a better chance 

of hitting the jackpot. 

But so what? 

So what if there’s an infinite number of possibilities?

So what if there are infinite outcomes 

and theoretical universes? 

So what? 

For knowing all of this, 

What end do we receive? 

The illusion of sureness. 

Through paradigms of our own creation we calculated all of these factors… 

but the concrete only drives us further to the abstract. The nature of space— 

of all reality— 

You can find answers 

yet simultaneously know so little. 

The problems and ponderings of knowledge. The medley of science and myth. 

Truth and fiction. 

Politics and religion. 

Complicated. Tragic. 

Beautiful. 

Ironic. 

Polarizing. 

Reality. 

Accept it for all that it is— 

and master it. 

This is how it begins. 

By Emily D'Addieco