You Never Began at Nothing

Why don’t we count the first year of people’s lives?

That’s the question that rose, quietly, as I lay reflecting on a dear friend’s birthday. A moment of simple tenderness unfolded into something vast—an inquiry into time, worth, and the illusion of beginnings.

Why do we act as though a person begins the day they are born?

Why do we pretend they began at nothing?

This belief—so ingrained in modern culture—is not true. It never was.

The Illusion of Zero

In most Western societies, we begin counting from zero. A baby is “zero years old” until that first birthday. A life isn’t measured until it’s completed something. The first year, though fully lived, is somehow uncounted. It’s a silent erasure of becoming.

This way of marking time tells a deeper story—one rooted in productivity, milestones, and completion. In this worldview, life begins not with being, but with doing.

But there is a deeper knowing. One we all carry.

The Wisdom of the Womb and Beyond

In many cultures, a child is considered one year old at birth. Time in the womb is sacred, part of the life journey. Some traditions even believe the soul’s journey began before conception—in the spirit world, as a whisper of intention, a prayer from the ancestors.

You were dreamt before you were born.

You arrived not empty, but full. Full of memory, rhythm, knowing. You arrived with your people in your bones. With mystery in your breath.

So why do we tell the story of beginning at nothing?

Because if you believe you start at zero, you’ll think your worth is something to be earned. You’ll spend your life trying to prove you matter. You’ll measure yourself by milestones and timelines, always chasing some future moment when you’ll be “enough.”

But what if the truth is this:

You have always been enough. You never began. You continued.

And your birth? That was just a threshold—a glorious moment where the unseen became seen.

The Art of Remembering

In this world that erases what it cannot measure, it is an act of rebellion to remember:

• That you began before breath.

• That the first year of life is sacred, even if we don’t count it.

• That your story didn’t start from scratch—it arrived already unfolding.

So today, as I reflect on my friend’s birthday, I don’t just celebrate their birth. I celebrate the whole path that led them here: the ancestors, the dreaming, the waters of the womb, the first heartbeat, the first cry, and every moment since.

I don’t see a life that began at nothing.

I see a life that always was.