It was just the same old beginning the same road leading to the same gate, the same early morning chill clinging to the air like something unwilling to move on. The dawn light stretched lazily across the treetops, painting everything in hues of lavender and memory. Yet beneath that sameness, something quiet but unmistakable, like a key turning in a long-ignored lock, had shifted.
That morning was ordinary in every outward sense. I woke to the same alarm tone I had ignored countless times before. The kettle hissed, my shoes waited by the door, and the mirror reflected a version of me rehearsing calm. Still, as I tied my laces, a peculiar thought crossed my mind: beginnings rarely announce themselves with fanfare. They creep in, dressed in the familiar.
Years earlier, I had told myself that a certain move, a certain job, a certain project would only be temporary a mere professional chapter, a brief detour before returning to what I truly knew as home. But the years piled up like layers of sediment, each one compacting the next until the idea of “temporary” became a fossil buried under routine. That morning felt like all the others had before it, yet I sensed the weight of repetition pressing on me, demanding reckoning.
When I stepped outside, the stray dogs were already at their post near the corner. A neighbour’s radio played an old song, scratchy with age but stubbornly alive. These sounds had once irritated me. Now, they were part of the pulse of my days. Even irritation, I realised, can evolve into familiarity if given enough time.
The road to work offered no surprises the same potholes, the same vendors waving their goods at passing cars, the same women balancing baskets on their heads with impossible grace. But as I walked, I noticed how the flags above the buildings shimmered differently in the wind that morning. It reminded me of how sameness can deceive; what we call repetition is often the world rehearsing its subtle changes.
Inside, the hum of the building was a language I knew too well: printers exhaling, colleagues exchanging morning greetings, the faint clatter of keyboards. My desk bore its usual clutter of reports and half-empty mugs. Yet, as I logged into my computer, I caught my reflection on the black screen a face slightly older, eyes dimmed with the comfort and fatigue of predictability. I wondered when routine had stopped being a tool for order and become a cage built out of professional competence.
It hit me hard then that every beginning I had ever known had worn the mask of familiarity. When I left one place for another years ago, I had sworn I would not fall into the same rhythm of overworking, the same cycle of unfulfilled plans. But even in new surroundings, the novelty wore off quickly, replaced by familiar patterns of ambition and fatigue. Later, when I accepted yet another “fresh opportunity,” I told myself this time it would be different. Yet here I was again Rooibos in hand, inbox overflowing, life on autopilot.
Perhaps the “same old beginning” is not a repetition of place or circumstance, but a repetition of self the same fears, the same justifications, the same half-made promises to live differently. We are, after all, creatures of habit, even in our search for change.
That afternoon, a colleague mentioned that his daughter had just started secondary school. His excitement was disarming, almost childlike. He described how she had ironed her uniform the night before, how she had lined up her pencils with precision as if arranging hope itself. As he spoke, I remembered my own first day at university the smell of new books and the hum of endless possibility. It occurred to me that for his daughter, the “same old beginning” might one day feel just as heavy and cyclical as mine did now but only if she let it.
After work, I walked home instead of taking a ride. The city glowed under the orange wash of sunset. Children played football laughter rolled down the street like song. For a brief moment, I saw life unmeasured by schedules or reports raw, unpredictable, and alive. Maybe the sameness I resented was not in the world but in the way I had stopped seeing it. When I got home, I made tea and sat by the window. The night insects had begun their symphony, and the smell of cooking food drifted from nearby houses. I thought of all the beginnings I had failed to recognise as such the morning after heartbreaks, the first quiet day after resignations, the hesitant steps into new chapters. Each had felt like an ending at the time, yet all had contained the seeds of renewal.
I remembered something my aunt, Tete Mai Dadi, once said, or did she say that? When my mind cannot locate the true source of a wise saying, it tends to attribute it to her. She was at least in my head the family’s quiet sage, after all. “Mwana, beginnings are like dawns you may sleep through them, but the day will still unfold.” I had laughed then, not understanding. But now, in the stillness of my apartment, her words found their home in me. The sameness of beginnings lies not in their repetition, but in our refusal to wake up to them.
So, I wrote in my journal that night: It was just the same old beginning but perhaps beginnings are meant to feel that way. Perhaps life does not offer new scenery until we learn to look with new eyes. The pen paused midway through the page as I considered how often I had mistaken comfort for contentment, or routine for purpose. Even stillness, I realised, can be a form of resistance to growth.
The following morning, I changed nothing dramatic. I still brewed my Rooibos, still walked the same route to work. Yet something had shifted. I greeted the guards more warmly, noticed the detail in the mural outside the building, and allowed myself to feel gratitude for small consistencies rather than frustration. For the first time in a long while, sameness did not feel like stagnation; it felt like stability waiting to be reimagined.
Over the weeks that followed, I began to see how every “same old beginning” in life carries a choice to treat it as monotony or as rehearsal. We rehearse our patience, our gratitude, our willingness to see beauty in repetition. Even the sunrise repeats itself, and yet we never accuse it of lacking imagination.
Looking back, I understand now that the most transformative chapters of my life began quietly. The decision to stay when leaving seemed easier. The choice to listen when speaking would have won me the argument. The resolve to find peace within the unchanging rhythm of days. Those were beginnings disguised as routines.
In the end, it is not the novelty of our beginnings that defines us, but our capacity to meet the familiar with renewed attention. The same old street, the same old tasks, the same old days all are invitations to start again with wiser eyes. And maybe that is what maturity truly means: to stop chasing the thrill of difference and start nurturing the depth of presence. That night, as rain whispered on the roof and the power flickered, I closed my notebook and whispered to myself: It was just the same old beginning. But this time, I smiled. Because I finally understood that every ordinary dawn is a doorway waiting for the courage of a different step.
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