On ... the first

I find beginnings often to be the most difficult.

I think, just before a step out the door: 'What if for the first step, my foot should land upon a rock?' My journey shall be ruined from the very start! But I cannot stay inside, where it is safe. Greater still would be the woe, to know that I had never begun. And so I say to myself 'Erastus, your journey may last but a second, but if you stay inside it will last exactly zero seconds. And zero divides into one an immeasurable amount of times. Therefore a journey of one second is infinity more fulfilling than one of zero.'

I drape my cloak upon my shoulder and take the handle to my hand. But then I think: 'Who is to say that time at home is not a journey. Perhaps not a journey of the feet, but could I not have a pleasant journey of the mind? Or even just a tasty journey of the mouth!?' And then I decide that all of life is a journey.

I was once told that for every path you choose you leave a thousand behind you, but who knows how many may lay ahead. And if you choose a path laden with traps or covered in dung, you need but turn around and find you're back to the path from which you came.

With a chuckle I am out the door, the grass cool between my toes. The ground is littered with stones, like stars in a sky of night, but not to my dismay. I say to them, 'You are not wicked' and take heed for where I step.

For if I should stub my toe they may exclaim to me: 'For what have you kicked me!?'