Spring heralds new beginnings. It is a time when the darkness and uncertainty of the winter is replaced by light (actually lots of it) and the certainty or sometimes that hope is here…finally. Spring is celebrated in many cultures by religious occasions that show new beginnings. I often wonder why do not the Roman Calendar begins with the first day of spring – it used to be at one time. But that is the topic for a different day.
We all love new beginnings. Starting afresh has been used so many times that it is more of a fad. Most of the time we have the intent to change – it doesn’t work. We go hard on ourselves citing our lack of willpower – but most of the time new beginnings start with doubt or uncertainty. Let’s think about the creation – God made everything so beautiful, created man and rested on the 7th day. What happens on the 8th,9th or 10th day? There is a certain sense of uncertainty partly because it is inherent by design. In the story of the creation, there was a tree placed right in the middle of the garden with clear instructions that though shall not eat from that tree. Now who would do that? On top of the uncertainty what would happen you place the lever for failure right in the middle of the garden.If one knew what men where, they are known to never follow rules or adhere to order. What happened was exactly as one could easily predict. Observe an young child they will always try out what they should never be trying – or what they have been told explicitly not to be doing so.
Our inability to have new beginnings can be traced to our incapability to adhere to any sense of order. We are not designed inherently to adhere to order or normalcy. We are inherently troublemakers and people ‘who love to poke the sleeping bear’. Thus within a short period of time we end up back to we were prior to the new beginnings. This cycle goes on and on.
If you look at the seasons, you can derive an analogy from it too. If spring heralds the start of a season, we have summer when the new beginnings are at its brightest followed by fall or autumn when it begins to falter and summarized by winter where a full cycle is hence completed.
What am i saying, every great initiative goes through a natural cycle of life and death. This invariably the cycle of life.
New beginnings are no different. They too have to follow the cycle of life. These self evident truths are the very nature of human existence and creation. Mainly because they are the inherent rules of the universe.
But is all hope lost? No, with every cycle there are remnants that keep feeding with each cycle – these are what we call in systems and processes as lessons learned or as history. they keep adding up and slowly the remnants make their way to what the outcome was first envisioned to be.
unsplash-logoAnton Darius
Tenny Thomas 