The last start of the final end. That is how choosing a path, a commitment to something, had always felt to me. An immovable stone room, fixed in its inertia state, housing the miniature figure, squeaking out fabricated excitement at each identical corner. If life moves in chapters, justified is the fear that one turn and we could be stuck in the wrong one for ages too long. In avoidance, we rest on a familiar page. Greasing under our touch, spoiling with every dog-eared epiphany we make and remake, yet do not move forward from.

I do not think I am supposed to have a middle. How do I choose the meatiest section of my living from this side of the story? Our knowing feels backwards. Why do the oldest get to be the wisest? Give it to us in youth, and those of us willed to remember how to live, will. Over-saturation of choices that slot into near identical structures truck the young mind into all sorts of mischief. The naughtiest of all being that things will work themselves out. The one way will arrive and you will never have to look back. (Or side to side in confusion, or down at your feet in shame). This young idea, of making a home in the unknown and resisting the boring meal served to us, ages out into self-indulged starvation and plain outnumbered oddness. Then any decision somehow feels too late anyway. Like enjoying a bag of wonky veg. Finally, some nutrition. I want the shiny waxy apple.

Imitation is easy, so why have I not followed another’s template? Out of the rehearsal and into the play. I suppose because that would be pretending. I do not play nicely with pretend. Indecision, from any angle, can feel like a sin. Playing devilishly with your food as others lick the knife clean and move on. Stuck at the table, in this child-like state of would-be adorable wonder, hidden behind a thinning adult mask, positively disintegrating.

The more I circle back to another false start, the more I learn. Like building up the momentum that I should have somehow had from the start. Harvesting the energy to coil the spring of my life’s beginning. I was entered into a race without realising I needed a ticket to begin. I was pleased enough with the occasion. The record keeps skipping, and it keeps skipping well into your twenties. At a point, I realise, this might be worse than one plays through in full, on a constant loop. It would not be magic, but the sound would fill the space, at least.

Progress comes, but it’s a kind not very explicable over a catch-up coffee. The realisations take root, earned from ageing and the experiences of trying and trying again. Your worry comes from matters of nothing. It is from ego cloaked as ambition, it is from the falseness of living for an identity, for others. It is all made up; nothing actually matters, you just make the best of it all. Where intended to soothe, this itches at my skin still. The irritant of awareness. A clarity revealed among chaos; an obviousness held within constraints. A path is a path, the time will pass anyway and you only have to live to live. All that which is constantly told but only heard once it is lived through. (Perhaps, I am committed - to getting my mid-life crisis out of the way early).

When I find myself on a precipice now, I am not as resistant as I once was. Fear of commitment is just fear of a narrative - and fear of a narrative is fear of fiction. Why be afraid of that which is just a story? Life will hand you labels, titles, dependants and baggage, all wrapped in a cover that is not authored by you - no matter what. Control is the illusion that keeps you from taking any road. You have to let yourself let go. Embrace it; the patchwork life. If you think like this, you will never succumb to being settled, you will never find yourself in one long numb middle. There is adventure in corners. There is mystery in routine. There is progress and growth in every blink (and every five-year plan). See the core break down into a thousand seeds. You are only the reader who understands its language. This is okay. Some commitments appear more final than others, sure, but freedom comes from your perspective. Start to flow along with life, aside your ego, not against it. Pay attention. Feel the abundance that lives in your wanting.

Play. What is not a lesson in achievement or movement, is a lesson in presence. Find that which is where you are not. Find that it has another name, no name, because ‘it’ was never the point, the feeling is. Your body is the mother to your mind, listen to her for once.

You may think you are contracting when you commit. Part of your power within is pulled out into an extrinsic entity. When you pay for that new course, sign the contract you were lucky to get, or date the sickly green flag - something external does contract, you are right. But not you. You always expand. You are part of the universe that breathes, that hums. We are not allowed to let go completely, but we can loosen our grip. All commitment is temporary - but it all leads to progress.