We are born from darkness. A darkness that is warm and protective and we emerge from the shadows to a world that is new to our senses. Sounds retain elements of familiarity, voices that we have heard from within our protective cocoon, while the reassurance of the first touch of our mother’s hand prompts a flurry of previously unknown activity and we experience smells and tastes for the first time. Light filters through our clouded vision, unidentifiable shapes that bring the first experience of ‘outside’ into our tiny world that never stops expanding from that moment. In an instant, we are more fragile, more vulnerable than we have ever been, a creation filled with love and hope and the best of intentions. We are beauty, we are innocence. We are perfection, unspoiled by reality. Our purity is fleeting, slipping away with every sound that we hear and every moment that we live from this first minute, our future shaped by unseen hands and unspoken words.
We take those tentative, shallow breaths, oblivious to our place in the universe. We now exist trapped between two moments, our first and our last, barely aware of what it means to be alive and oblivious to the end and our distance from it.
Everything happens.
Sounds and smells retain elements of familiarity, voices that we have known that have become part of our protective cocoon. Light filters through our clouded vision, barely identifiable shapes bringing the final experience of ‘outside’ into our enormous world that never stops diminishing from that moment. In an instant, we are once again fragile, more vulnerable than we have ever been, a creation filled with love yet without hope, eroded by the intentions of others. We are beauty, we are guilt, laden with our shattered dreams and hopes that never were, carrying the time that we wasted with the hearts that we broke and those who broke ours. Our impurity is permanent, cloaking us as we slip away with every sound we have heard and every moment that we lived to this final minute, our past shaped by the hands of those we knew and the words we came to be known by.
We take those tentative, shallow breaths, afraid of our place in the universe. We existed, trapped between two moments, our first and our last, painfully aware of what it meant to be alive, aware of the end and our distance from it. The darkness arrives and some of us head willingly towards it, while others rage against the inevitable, clinging to the surface of a cruel world that teased us with a myriad of dreams and possibilities, some just a heartbeat away and some as distant and unreachable as the edge of the universe. It is a darkness that is cold and fearful, accompanied by the shadows of who we were and the things that we did in a world that is new to our senses. It is, we are told, the way of things.
Copyright Alec Hepburn, 2025.
A Life More Ordinary 
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