Start

Finding a word to share doesn’t always come easily. Sometimes a word arrives, perfectly packaged up with an idea ready to share. Other times, like this week, it’s the eleventh hour and I’m still scratching around for a word to grab me.

I just need to make a start.

Start

To begin

The point in time or space when it was the beginning

Surprise-spurred sudden movement

What comes to mind?

Make a start.

You’ve got to start somewhere.

Start as you mean to go on.

A fresh start.

I look for a poem about starting something new. The first one my eyes land on is For a New Beginning, John O’Donohue. I start reading.

I think, in a vague sense, of all the possible ideas to explore that could be the beginning, the start, of something new. Not in the drastic, pull your life from under you kind of way that perhaps he speaks of, but in the where might this lead kind of way.

He talks of out-of-the-way places of the heart. Maybe it’s the same thing. If you’re pulled towards doing something, is it the heart that leads and the head that halts, with its constraints of reason and judgement? We force some ideas to sit back quietly; now’s not the time. Others will never see the light of day because, why, what’s their purpose?

Where might this week’s word take you?

A new start doesn’t have to mean an end; it just needs enough space for the idea to unfurl.

What idea have you been putting to the back of your mind? Can you make a start, or start again, if it’s something you’ve worked on before?