There was once a traveller who wished to find the beginning of the world.
He had heard that everything had a beginning.
A tree began with a seed.
A house began when its foundations were laid.
A song began when the first note was sounded.
Even the oldest mountains, people told him, had once been young.
So the traveller thought the matter must be simple.
If everything had a beginning, then surely the world itself must have one.
And if he could find that beginning, he would know where everything started.
So he set out.
He travelled for many days and asked everyone he met the same question.
“Where is the beginning?”
Some pointed towards the mountains.
Some towards the sea.
Some towards the place where the sun rose.
At last he came to an old woman sitting beside a road.
“Can you tell me where the world began?” he asked.
The old woman looked at him carefully.
“Why do you want to know?”
“Because I want to know what happened before it began.”
The old woman was silent for a while.
Then she asked:
“Before?”
“Yes.”
“Before the world began?”
“Yes.”
She smiled.
“Then you will have to tell me where you are standing.”
The traveller looked around.
He was standing on a road.
Behind him was the village.
Before him were hills.
Above him was the sky.
Below him was the earth.
“I am standing here,” he said.
“And when?”
The traveller frowned.
“Now.”
“And what came before now?”
“Yesterday.”
“And before yesterday?”
“The day before.”
“And before that?”
He began to understand what she was doing.
“More days.”
The old woman nodded.
“You can walk backwards through them as far as you like.”
“And eventually I will reach the beginning.”
“Perhaps.”
The traveller looked pleased.
“But then,” said the old woman, “you will still have a question.”
“What question?”
“What came before the first day?”
The traveller considered this.
“The darkness.”
“When was the darkness?”
“Before the light.”
“And when was that?”
“Before the first day.”
The old woman shook her head.
“You have put the first day after the darkness.”
“Yes.”
“And you have put the darkness before the first day.”
“Yes.”
“Then you have already given the darkness a place in time.”
The traveller was silent.
He looked at the road.
He looked at the hills.
He looked up at the sky.
“Then perhaps there was nothing before the beginning.”
“Where was this nothing?”
The traveller opened his mouth.
Then closed it.
He tried again.
“Everywhere.”
The old woman raised an eyebrow.
“Everywhere?”
“Yes.”
“But where is everywhere?”
He could not answer.
He began to feel that something was wrong with the journey.
Not with the road.
Not with the hills.
Not even with the question.
Something was wrong with the way he had imagined the destination.
So he continued walking.
At last he came to a great gate standing alone in the plain.
There was no wall around it.
There was no road leading through it.
There was only the gate.
Above it were carved three words:
THE BEGINNING OF ALL THINGS
The traveller's heart leapt.
At last.
He approached the gate.
But there was no handle.
He pushed it.
It did not move.
He pulled it.
It did not move.
He searched for a path around it, but there was none.
Finally he called out:
“Who guards the beginning?”
A voice answered from the other side.
“No one.”
“Then open the gate.”
“It cannot be opened.”
“Why?”
“Because there is no other side.”
The traveller stared at the gate.
“That makes no sense.”
The voice replied:
“You have brought the sense with you.”
The traveller stepped back.
He looked at the gate again.
Then he noticed something he had not seen before.
The ground beneath his feet.
The air around him.
The distance between himself and the gate.
The sequence of his thoughts.
Everything he had used to imagine the beginning had already belonged to the world.
He had imagined a place before the world.
But a place was already part of the world.
He had imagined a time before time.
But time was already there in the word before.
He had imagined a cause that brought the world into being.
But a cause required something to happen, and something to happen required an order in which one thing could follow another.
He had even imagined nothing.
And had given that nothing a place in which to be.
The traveller sat down.
For a long time he said nothing.
Then he asked the voice:
“So there was no beginning?”
The voice was quiet.
“That is not what you have discovered.”
“What, then?”
“That you do not yet know what a beginning is.”
The traveller looked towards the horizon.
He had set out to find the first moment of the world.
Instead he had found a gate.
And the gate had taught him something stranger.
A beginning is not simply the first thing in a sequence.
For a sequence must already exist before first can have a meaning.
A beginning is a transition.
But a transition requires a distinction between what was and what became.
And so the traveller understood why the gate had no road beyond it.
He had been asking for a place beyond the world while using the world to imagine the place.
He had been asking what came before time while using time to ask the question.
He had been asking what caused everything while imagining causation already standing outside everything.
The gate had not concealed the beginning from him.
The gate had revealed the problem with looking for it.
The traveller rose.
“Then what should I ask?”
For the first time, the voice seemed almost amused.
“Do not ask what happened before the beginning.”
The traveller waited.
“Ask what must already be possible,” said the voice, “for anything to begin.”
And the gate disappeared.
The traveller stood alone on the plain.
There was no darkness behind it.
No hidden world.
No ancient cause waiting in the distance.
Only the world.
Already there.
And the traveller, for the first time, wondered not where the world had begun—
but how anything could ever begin at all.
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