The beginning of something has so much to do with its destination.
Children, for example, are dependent early-on for their parents’ love and discipline, nurture and admonition to one day responsibly take their place in society.
A cornerstone is placed in such a way that everything else constructed upon it corresponds to the same angle.
A river – on this last Sunday of September World River Day – has a start and a finish, hopefully – given rivers are often referred to as “the world’s circulatory system” – without contamination with critical implications along the way.
Governments are no different.
To be honest, fair, a lover of justice – all else flows from there.
These, specifically, more than any other qualities, are what are needed for the right exercise of office.
Everything that follows – the blessings on the land; the happiness of the people, especially the poor and needy; the keeping at bay the enemy – all depend on the ability to make just and fair decisions.
“And so, it begins,” according to the Urban Dictionary, is “a saying that is used anytime something bad happens or may happen.”
But the opposite is also true.
“And so, it begins” is what makes Enchanted Valley a top-contender for must-do hikes in the Olympic Wilderness of the state of Washington.
Enchanted Valley is a mystical, magical place. It’s called “the valley of 10,000 waterfalls.” It is the beginning of a river and a fishing adventure of me with my father that still, to this day, a half-century later, serves as a reminder that the beauty – the confluence – of something that will be is so often the consequence of how it began.
