I ask myself this constantly.
What is the beginning?
Did it begin at birth or my last death? Are we drawn kicking and screaming into this life, traumatized by the end of our previous one, or is each and every single birth and death unique to each soul? Are we continually reunited and subsequently torn from some grand universal consciousness on a cycle of Samsara, or are we each a unique iteration of life?
Did it begin at some point earlier in my life as I know it? Some monumental moment from which I’ve decided to pivot and continue on some set trajectory, some spiritual journey through which I’ll find meaning, catharsis, redemption?
What is it?
Is it some sort of drive, or purpose, or general zeitgeist I am supposed to be feeling? Some quest or mission that I am to fulfill? I find myself clawing at the edges of my mind, grasping, reaching inexorably toward some meaning that perpetually draws further away the harder I strive to each it. To simply throw one’s hands in the air and declare “There is no such purpose” with any shard of certainty feels so disingenuous and intellectually lazy that it feels like a stand in for the lack of an answer, yet too insecure to admit that one does not know.
We can study every physical phenomenon within the observable universe, developing tests and running models against the multitudinous factors that compose physical systems, compiling and transcribing the various laws that we observe the universe to be operating under, but at the end of the proverbial day, where does that leave us, existentially?
Ever since the human experience began to be recorded by our ancestors, we have always searched for a deeper meaning behind the lives we live. The creation of Gods and Goddesses, the development of religion, and the wars fought over how we must interpret the meaning of our lives are testaments to this search for meaning. The countless lives lived in devotion to this general yearning for a deeper understanding is unfathomable. The earliest human graves, adorned with care by loved ones, and our innate sadness when we first encounter death betrays our inner terror at what lies beyond the veil.
There are so many places where I want to say “It began”, but I can’t settle on what I want to tell you, or what I think I should say. I don’t want to be pedantic, or write in a voice only containing aphorisms and platitudes, and I want to convey my own uncertainty when facing all of this, as I find myself truly terrified by life on a daily basis. I use this phrase ‘terrified’ not out of paralysis, but of utter shock that anyone can experience even a fraction of the sheer complexity of the universe we live in and tell someone else “Don’t worry, I understand everything that’s going on, everything is fine, this is normal.” with a straight face. I’m terrified that other people think that this world is mundane, that this life is “business as usual” and that our lives are lived in some sort of bizarre stasis where work and play and politics confine a separate reality than the constant struggle against Nature itself.
The sheer viscerality of our lives should shake us to our cores on a daily basis. Our fragile flesh and bones are all that keeps us from seeing what happens next. We should never live for this promised proverbial “someday”, since we could die of anything at anytime. WHEN it happens, there will be no form to fill out our grievances, all the things we left unsaid, all the lovers never loved, all the exasperating tugs at our souls that ache deeper than bone. You won’t get to say goodbye to everyone that you want to. Maybe we dream of an afterlife for precisely these reasons, creating our own insurance policy so we get all our goodbyes in, all of our closure, all of our apologies, and finally, our catharsis.
I remember watching someone (fictionally) die in a TV show when I was really young. I can’t remember what show it was, but if anyone’s familiar with American television and the commonality of violence in popular culture, then you already know this happens all the time. I remember asking my mother how long they would be dead for, and I think this question took her aback a bit.
“Well, forever…”
“So they won’t be alive again?”
“Maybe, if there’s heaven, but they won’t be alive again”
“Oh…okay”
I remember ever since then, I’ve had trouble sleeping. I remember sitting up late that night, shocked, shaken to my core that there’s someday going to be a world not just without me, but without my dog, or my mom, or my dad, or anyone that I’ll ever love. I remember being inconsolable for days on end, and my parents occasionally trying to cheer me up. To this day, when I close my eyes at night, I’m sitting in my bedroom at age six, looking out into the darkness and wondering what eternity really is, and I’m still just as terrified.
I’ve found myself roaming the streets at night, too restless to fall asleep, smoking cigarette after cigarette as I pace the hallways of the world. I don’t know if it’s just to pass the time, or to exhaust myself from thinking. I’ve spent too many late nights in damp, dingy bars trying to surround myself with lights and people so I wouldn’t have to look out and see my childhood room anymore, clutching a dog whose ashes are on a shelf over 7,000 miles away. I’ve spent years in bad relationships, clinging to the hope for a ‘soulmate’ and that I won’t wind up existentially alone for an eternity. I let the ones I loved the most, hurt me the most.
It’s not easy to really write any of this, but it’s hard to nail down where it really began.
Maybe it all begins laying on the hood of my truck at Richmond International Airport, watching the first girl I ever loved fly away, thinking:
“I’ll never feel this way again.”
Maybe it all begins on the first day of college when I met my future ex-girlfriend on the metro and wound up feeling that way again, or maybe a year and a half later when that unraveled and we utterly despised each other. These would all be fun stories to write (in hindsight), if this were all some sappy tome on love, but it’s not, so….
It all begins in the International Departures Lounge at Pudong International Airport over a plate of pickled chicken feet and a bottle of lukewarm Tsingtao.