The One Step

The one step is always nagging me. Everything changes to become the room for my life choices, and I can always see this one last step asking whether or not I should take it. The one step didn’t come here on its own, it is in itself the accretion of everything I did or said before; yet this one step is the one I don’t want ownership for.

The one step sums up the experiences and is at the same time the pivot point that will determine the rest of my life. The one step provokes question about free will, about life choices, about desires & needs, but also about everything else I did without really knowing why I was doing them. This one step has this peculiar quality of being wanted and avoided at the same time, loved and hated. This is the prism through which I ask myself  “Should I do it?” knowing deeply that there’s no way out of it, and knowing taking it can either brings me everything I want or bringing upon myself nothing but regrets; just a game of perception really.

This one step is the final assault upon my predicament, as it sets the rules of a Life partially lived and partially avoided, for the one step to ask if I am daring or not. Comforts of a stable life, which gets shaken by the strength of the step, by my mind, trying to make sense of a situation that is here, no longer transient; forever waiting for my dullness to come to terms.

How am I to understand this last step? And how can I take it and face the consequences of that? If Life is the sum total of all my experiences, what does it say about the step’s ability to reinforce this sense of living my life with congruency?

Can it really be avoided, or is it simply a fool’s quest – me trying to imbue it with significance and meaning, for whatever meaning could mean – only to realize the only reason it’s here is because everything does lead to it?

The one step waits in silent darkness, waiting to reveal itself, asking for my folly and despair, my thirst and yearning, my shame and desire to come to fruition. One step, only one for a new course, for the unfolding of a cascade made of all the people to be accountable for, all the torments of affliction and all the joy to be expected.

One step as a bet, as no one knows if the other side is the way I envisioned it. If it is, I will be the first one to reap the benefits, if it’s not, I will be the last one to rest.

As I close my eyes, I ask myself “Where did it even started?” Time passes, people, ideas and thoughts; a sense of frustration arises, voices. Being told about how Life is short “there’s only so much we can live.” Suffice to leave me with the feeling that something needs to be said or done: “Congratulations, life is yours to create now.” Exultation over excitation, and agitation after tensions: this is what the one step is about. Breathing life in, breathing choices out.

Is Life a rehearsal for Death? Is it the play? Are we the spectators or the protagonists? Where is the fine line between all these potentials as they arise? The voices in my head tell me this is the same anyway. Sitting here and thinking the one step is neither the first nor the last, what difference would it make then? Who dictates the rules?

Barriers of stagnancy and calls for disrupts: jumping in-between confers a sensation of floating but sinking into the abysses of our finite time. One step for one choice, one step for one call: no more, but no less.

Hoping for silence, hoping for an end, hoping for solace: hoping to hope. One step for an everlasting moment, more than one step, there are choices for one’s Life. One step which doesn’t sublime possibilities more than despair ensnares our moves: If there’s one step, it also means there’s one thing that needs to be changed.

Waiting patiently in darkness, it whispers: “Come and take me…”

I can resist anything but temptation.

Oscar Wilde

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