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So, what if your life was a means to a beginning?  No doubt we’re all too familiar with the refrain, “ a means to an end.” This idiom of life typically signals that we are willing to or we are already doing something we are really not that interested in because we know it will help us achieve something else.  I don’t know how it is with you but when I have found myself uttering these words over the years they seem to have been more closely aligned with other terms like “a necessary evil” or  “the end justifies the means.”  Seemingly, in almost every case the emphasis is on adjusting my thinking such that I can rationalize or justify my way towards finishing something I would simply rather not be doing.  Perhaps you’ve even heard someone resigned to this “end game” position as they describe their own journey of life?

All of this has had me wondering what changes would occur in the way we approached life if we were to ask ourselves the question, “What if our lives were a means to a beginning?”  In the end (no pun intended) isn’t this the right question to be asking?  For instance, rather than see ourselves repeating the negative patterns of former generations we were to see ourselves as first generation cycle breakers intent on changing the game for the generations that follow after us.  The journey of life seen in this light would certainly herald a new starting point, a new beginning flush with endless possibilities.  No longer would we be tempted to adopt a posture of simply sojourning our way on life’s journey living a somewhat disinterested and distant connection to the “what could be” of life.  No longer would we view life through the lens of finality choosing perhaps to see life more along the lines of being invited in to the continuum of eternity.  Why even the motivation for our investing might change as shift from thinking in dollars terms of “having enough” as we begin to invest in relational terms of “giving enough.”  No doubt we all want to finish well.  Could it be though that to finish well we have to remind ourselves of where it all started?  Wasn’t it, “In the beginning?”

Jon Thurman

https://jonthurman.com/2012/05/28/a-means-to-a-beginning/