Theme Thursday: Beginning

Once upon a time, there was a lady named Liza, who carried her camera wherever she went. Her photographs were a joy to behold. Liza shared her photos with her friends at Theme Thursday. In the fullness of time, the Theme Thursday folks asked her to suggest a theme. Liza spoke right up. "Beginning," she said. "Let's talk about beginning." And there it was - the beginning of this week's assignment.

No matter how hard I try to think of beginning as a verb, it keeps turning into a noun.

I know, I know. "It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas."

"I'm beginning as I intend to go on."

Of course beginning can be a verb (or even an adjective). It just feels like a noun, so I'm going to treat it (mostly) as a noun.

The image I've chosen (source here) illustrates one beginning, the beginning of a human life (well, close to the beginning). It's a time of joy and a time of hope, a fresh start - and it's the beginning of something else - a relationship between the child and her parents. This relationship grows from another relationship, that between the child's mother and father. In fact, it's hard to find the beginning of this story, because each life is connected to other lives, and something new, some new relationship, is always beginning. The child relates to her parents, then to siblings, aunts and uncles, grandparents. Then she goes to school and begins her education. She also encounters other children. Some of those encounters will be the beginning of lifelong relationships.

At some point, the child, now beginning her life as an adult, might meet someone with whom she will begin a love relationship, and perhaps she will bear a child. Then the story will begin again, with a new baby, a new complex of relationships, on and on, ad infinitum.

But no. Life isn't just about beginnings. It is about endings, as well. Each beginning carries within it the seed of an ending. I am reminded of something T.S. Eliot wrote in Four Quartets 4: Little Gidding (online source here)
"....

V

What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make and [sic] end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
We die with the dying:
See, they depart, and we go with them.
We are born with the dead:
See, they return, and bring us with them.
The moment of the rose and the moment of the yew-tree
Are of equal duration. A people without history
Is not redeemed from time, for history is a pattern
Of timeless moments...."

When I started thinking about this post, I immediately developed an earworm - Art Garfunkel's "All I Know". It is such a lovely song, I didn't even mind, and it seems like a fitting end to this little post about beginnings - and endings.