First Step

            I believe that human stories can be traced back to that moment of choosing to explore the unknown instead of returning to the familiar world, so I tried to write a story that encapsulates that moment.

            

           When you woke up this morning, you knew it was time.  The safe world of your home, family, friends can no longer hold you; you have to strike out on your own.  It is time to begin moving forward to new things, for better or for worse.

            Saying goodbye is never easy.  You have to admit to others, not just yourself, that their world is not enough for you.  Loss hurts more people than just you.  They lose you, and you lose them; you say that you can always come back, but you will come back changed.  They lose you as you are now, and you lose them as you know them.  Is it worth it? 

It will have to be worth it, because, despite your mother’s tears and your father’s sighs and your friends’ protests, it is time.

            You prepare your goodbyes, then make them.  You plan, getting ready for what little you can imagine of the great unknown.  You go over every possibility for what will come next.  You get help while you can, before you are thrust out into the great unknown, yet you know all the time that your preparation is useless.  You cannot plan for the unknown.

            Finally, you leave your home.  You wave good-bye to those you love, crying a bit as you lose sight of their tear-stained faces.  Then you wipe your eyes and turn them forward, moving past the world you know into its hazy, vaguely fathomable borders.  Things begin to take on a new look, a strange tinge of unreality as they morph from the familiar shapes they normally have.  And suddenly, you find yourself looking out onto something new and dark.  Something unknown.  Mysterious.  Unfamiliar.  Strange.

            Your heart beats a little faster.  Out of fear?  Or excitement?  Both, really.  Uncertainty breeds infinite possibility stretching forever before you.  You want nothing more than to touch, explore, discover, and yet you fear nothing more. 

            You hold back, circling warily on the border between what is known and what is not.  All that preparation, the love you took with you and left behind, the plans you laid.  They don’t matter now.  What matters now is your choice. 

            The darkness of mystery beckons.  The light of the comfortable and familiar pulls you back.  You are unsteady, teetering on the edge of the unknown.  One step forward is all that exists in the world; it is all that is uncertain and terrifying and beautiful and glorious.

            You know what you have to do.  You step forward.

            In that step, everything shifts.  The unknown begins to illuminate as you explore it, leaving your own knowledge on each part.  You meet new people, whose love offers you more light in this quickly-becoming-old place.  You find a brightness within yourself that you didn’t know existed, then shine it under rocks to light up those corners.

            When you return home, you find that yes, you have lost something.  Those you’ve known are lost to the past, replaced by new people behind familiar faces.  But you can explore those unfamiliar people now and find the people you had loved somewhere within them. 

After all, you did take that first, terrifying, exhilarating step.