Talking in universal terms is quite banal, but what has banality ever done to us? If you want this to take an existential route: we exist because we exist; our essence comes afterwards, from our actions. We are our actions, and that is where our responsibility lies, but we do not have a built-in purpose.
Then, if that is the truth—which to most it does feel like the truth—when my actions have stopped defining me for a few months and I am on autopilot, how can I “begin again?” Everyone is talking about this great new start that is going to be revolutionary, but where is that beginning located? Why can’t I find it?
Let me propose an intriguing thought: We have difficulty finding this beginning because there is no such thing as a begining; our universe has denied us this privilege. You were never there for any beginning, let alone your own, so how could you ever be able to “start again,” since beginnings are not only absent from your lexicon, they are not even part of your nature?
Now, since there is no start, there never was a start and there might never be one, we have to identify where we are right now; we have to locate ourselves in order to exist essentially. The only logical answer is that we are located in the margins, in the in-between, in the liminal space of an airport lounge. Thus, we are marginal beings; we have no beginning, no end, we only exist in the middle, and that is why when others say “start anew,” it sounds to us completely ludicrous.
Our answer, I think, is not as complex. I think we are capable of existing comfortably when we abandon the shackles of new beginnings and move beyond the autopilot delirium. When we stop looking for a beginning and start looking for solutions, when we stop being researchers and become negotiators.
Also read:The unbairable lightness of freedom
