The Beginning of Everything

by Robyn Schneider

I still think that everyone’s life, no matter how unremarkable, has a singular tragic encounter after which everything that really matters will happen. That moment is the catalyst—the first step in the equation. But knowing the first step will get you nowhere—it’s what comes after that determines the result.

Words could betray you if you chose the wrong ones, or mean less if you used too many.

I wondered what things became when you no longer needed them, and I wondered what the future would hold once we’d gotten past our personal tragedies and proven them ultimately survivable.

Oscar Wilde once said that to live is the rarest thing in the world, because most people just exist, and that’s all.