A job began is a job half done

            To say that a job began is a job half done is quite a catchy phrase, with all of the truisms like “starting is the hardest part” and “the blank page is the artist’s worst enemy”— and it certainly helps that Horace was perhaps the first one to coin this type of phrase. But it leaves such a crucial element out—the middle. The middle of the road, middle age, the middle of two things, the middle of an argument, the middle of a word…

But ah, how I’ve waited to use this excellent study that hangs in my Bible classroom—a study from Cambridge that says that no matter what word it is as long, even if all of the letters in the middle are mixed up, as long as the first and letters are the same, the word can be read at the same speed as if all the letters were in proper order. So it is, that in our lives it matters only where we begin and where we finish. Some are born into wealth and greatness and power, but do not begin in taking up their life towards the finish and end up little removed from when they were born. Yet some, some begin in dregs and raise up greatness, and by starting, whether they have a goal or not they have begun a race that will take them somewhere. The gravity is of little matter, only the distance that they go. The middle means nothing if there is no beginning and if there is a beginning it takes but a step to bring an end.

I began a few months back writing a novel, not the first one I began. Its meaning is dually poignant. First, that beginning it is nothing like finishing it, or even getting into the middle, and second, its title: Where it takes me. I am writing with no goal in mind, I have no idea how it will end, if it will end in a way I hoped, how the characters will come together, how the plot will develop and resolve. But it is out of that curiosity that I continue—I must continue, you see, for the words now, know something I yet, do not. By beginning I have given myself a reason to end, I have allowed for an ending to take place.

A page, a paragraph, half a face, a line—that’s all it takes. We did exercises in art on just that, taking this or that squiggling or zagging line and turning it into something—not perhaps what the artist of the line intended, but something, something more than what was there, easier than with only imagination and a blank page.

Why do I tell you this? Do I need to verify Horace’s outstanding credibility or even the truth of such a commonly heard statement? No, but it was necessary that I might start, that, by getting words on a page, all that is left is finishing it. Having begun, I am now able to end. Having begun I conquered all the alabaster demons of the white page hushing them with words that I might end and like Horace said, finish the job by living each moment as the beginning and pressing onward until my time expires, that the stretch of my growth in life would be long because I started, and every step after that simply added to the glory of where I might end up. I began  and that has made all the difference.