The Case of the Endless Beginning

The Case of the Endless Beginning

Every time you think you’ve reached the last page, a new chapter appears.

Another stormy night, another stack of case files. I had just wrapped one up with a neat little bow when a fresh folder slid across my desk. Only it wasn’t fresh. Same case. Same players. Just when I thought I had nailed the ending, the whole thing cracked open again. And the deeper I dug, the more my old conclusions didn't mean a damn thing. Taoist wisdom, dismantled dogmas, stubborn fictional characters, and a psychologist’s advice were all suspects in the same philosophical crime. But I’m a digital gumshoe. Solving riddles is my beat. So, flashlight in hand and trenchcoat on, I stepped out into the monsoon to start snooping around.

The First Witness, Lao-Tzu

The Tao is an empty vessel; it is used, but never filled.

Lao-Tzu begins with a paradox that is central to Taoist thought: emptiness as the highest form of usefulness. In the ancient Chinese worldview, an empty vessel is not a void to be feared, but a potential to be honoured. It is precisely because it is empty that it can receive. If it were already full, nothing more could be added. Tao as the “empty vessel” suggests an inexhaustible source. Unlike human constructs, which wear out through use, the Tao is strengthened and renewed the more it is drawn upon. Imagine a well that refills itself even as the bucket is lowered countless times. The water never stagnates because its source is not finite. This vision stands in sharp contrast to the scarcity mindset that governs much of human behaviour. Where the world sees depletion, the Tao offers endless replenishment.

Oh, unfathomable source of ten thousand things!

The “ten thousand things” is a poetic shorthand for the infinite variety of existence. To call the Tao “unfathomable” acknowledges both its mystery and its depth. This is not a source that can be mapped, charted, or domesticated. It is not an artifact of human culture, nor is it bound by the categories of human thought. Here, Lao-Tzu draws the mind away from rigid systems and towards the vastness that gives rise to all things. In Taoist philosophy, the source does not merely initiate creation and then withdraw. It continually sustains and permeates all that exists. It is the wellspring behind every tree, river, breath, and heartbeat.

Blunt the sharpness,

Sharpness suggests both aggression and excessive refinement. To “blunt the sharpness” is to temper extremes, to soften the edge that wounds both the wielder and the world. In the personal realm, this means moderating our own tendencies towards confrontation or pride. In the social realm, it suggests dismantling systems that thrive on conflict and division.

Untangle the knot,

Knots are metaphors for confusion, entanglement, and needless complexity. The Taoist response is not to pull harder at the knot, but to loosen it gently until its strands separate. This is a counterpoint to the modern urge to over-engineer solutions. Sometimes the act of release achieves what force never could.

Soften the glare,

Glare blinds. In human character, glare manifests as arrogance or ostentation. Lao-Tzu’s counsel is to dim the light that dazzles but does not warm. A steady glow serves better than a blinding flash. Here we see an ethic of humility, where quiet influence outlasts loud spectacle.

Merge with dust.

Dust is the most common of substances, trampled underfoot and unnoticed. To merge with dust is to embrace simplicity and anonymity, to resist the pull of self-importance. In the Taoist frame, greatness often hides in plain sight. The sage does not demand recognition but becomes as unremarkable as dust, and thereby remains in harmony with all things.

Oh, hidden deep but ever present!

This paradox captures the essence of the Tao’s mystery. Hidden deep means it is beyond the grasp of the casual observer, yet it is ever present, permeating all existence. It is like the air: invisible, yet in every breath. This duality invites both humility and trust. One cannot possess the Tao, but one can participate in it.

I do not know from whence it comes.

Lao-Tzu’s admission here is not ignorance, but wisdom. To acknowledge the limits of knowledge is to stand on the threshold of true understanding. The refusal to impose a false certainty protects the Tao from being reduced to mere doctrine. In this way, Taoism offers a radically open-ended metaphysics.

It is the forefather of the gods.

Here Lao-Tzu situates the Tao beyond all deities and cosmologies. In ancient China, this would have been a profound assertion: even the gods emerge from the Tao. It is the ground of being itself, the unconditioned from which all conditioned realities flow. The implication for the reader is striking. If the Tao is the source of all, then communion with it is communion with the deepest truth of existence, prior to all cultural or religious frameworks.

Clue takeaway: The Tao does not end. It folds back on itself, always feeding the next beginning. The more it is drawn upon, the more it overflows. It resists finality, remaining both ancient and ever new.

The Tao gave me my first lead. An empty vessel that never runs dry. A source that hides in the open. It sounded like the kind of witness who’d seen everything and told you nothing straight. I closed the file on Lao-Tzu, but I knew better than to think the case was over. If the Tao was all beginnings and no ends, maybe that explained why the last case I thought I’d closed had opened up again.

That thought took me back to an older crime scene. Not a back alley or a dim-lit bar, but the pews and pulpits of my former life. Fundamentalism. The doctrines had been my old case files, each one stamped “Solved” in red ink. Only now, the ink had started to fade. Evidence had gone missing. Witnesses contradicted themselves. And somewhere in the rubble, I started to wonder if maybe I had never cracked the case at all.

The Second Witness, Contradiction

The wreckage stretched out before me like a city after a long siege. Cracked steeples, splintered pulpits, yellowed hymnals gathering dust. Once upon a time, I had called this place home. The streets were familiar. The signs clear. The rules iron-clad. Back then I thought walking away would be the ending. Roll credits, fade to black. But endings, I have learned, can be front doors in disguise.

The clues had been there all along, hidden in plain sight. The contradictions had worn the mask of mystery, and I had taken that mask at face value. Inside the walls, they felt normal. From the outside, they lit up like neon under a blacklight.

A God who is said to be love, yet seems to love like a private club with a locked door and a selective guest list. He redeems only His chosen few, while the rest are left outside in the cold. The same God, in the same sacred text, orders His people to wipe out entire nations, men, women, children, and even livestock, in the name of purity. Inside the system, you call it divine justice. Outside, it looks like the moral equivalent of a crime scene.

An Old Testament that thunders against homosexuality in the strongest of terms, yet treats polygamy like an eccentric uncle at the family reunion. Not openly endorsed, but hardly shown the door. Kings with harems are scolded for idolatry, greed, or pride, but rarely for the wives themselves. Inside, you call it cultural context. Outside, it looks like a moral scale weighted in strange places.

A theology that declares God’s love for the whole world, yet consigns billions to eternal torment for nothing more than being born into the wrong faith or the wrong continent. Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, all stamped damned by default. The argument goes that everyone has a chance, yet the math says otherwise when Christianity makes up a slim minority of the globe’s population. Inside, it is called the narrow way. Outside, it sounds like the odds are rigged.

And a rigid doctrinal code that prizes being right over being real. Theology is wielded like a weapon, and the human heart is often collateral damage. Doubt is contraband, instinct is heresy, and empathy is treated with suspicion. Inside, you call it contending for the faith. Outside, it feels more like guarding the fortress at all costs, even if it means starving the people inside.

Back then, these contradictions were like hairline cracks in the walls, barely visible, easy to ignore if you kept your head down. But once I stepped outside, they gaped open into chasms. They were not closing the case, they were opening a bigger one.

I realised deconstruction was not demolition for demolition’s sake. It was a controlled collapse to make space for something new. Tearing down what no longer works is not a finish line. It is a launch pad into a future I cannot fully chart, but one that feels alive.

Clue takeaway: The rubble is not the end. It is the ground floor of whatever comes next.

The trail was not growing cold. If anything, the contradictions of my old faith had thrown petrol on the fire. I had torn apart the crime scene, sifted through the rubble, and found no final answers. Only more questions. That is when I noticed something peculiar. The same thing was happening at my desk.

My fictional detectives, crooks, and wide-eyed dreamers were misbehaving again. They refused to follow the outline. They slipped out of the neat boxes I built for them, turned up in scenes I had not planned, and whispered lines I had never written. It was as if they knew something I did not. And in chasing them, I began to wonder if the same principle was at work in life itself.

The Third Witness(es), My Characters

My desk was a mess again. Pages strewn like cigarette butts, coffee rings bleeding into margins, typewriter keys sticking as if even they were suspicious of what came next. I had sat down certain of the ending. I had the map, the compass, the trail marked in red pencil. But somewhere between chapter three and the climax, my characters got wise.

They pulled the wheel, crashed the car, and walked off in a direction I had never plotted. They made friends I had not authorised, kept secrets I had not imagined, and sometimes solved cases I never meant for them to touch. They were not puppets. They were witnesses with their own testimony, and the more I listened, the more I realised my outline was a polite suggestion, not a binding contract.

Nick Grayson is the prime example. The Truth in the Lies was supposed to be the case that wrapped it all up. The doors closed, the streets cleared, the detective could rest. But Nick had other plans. Turns out the so-called ending was just him loosening his tie before the next storm rolled in. Pure Evil is living proof. The moment the last page of the first book hit the desk, the sequel shoved its way through the door, demanding attention.

It was the same trick the Tao plays. The same move my old theology pulled without my consent. A chapter closes and you think you are free to file the case and go home. Then you realise the last sentence was just bait for the next beginning.

Clue takeaway: The end of one chapter is always the hook for the next.

Nick’s stubbornness had me thinking. Maybe life works the same way. You draw a line, declare the job finished, and start clearing your desk. Then something—an idea, a memory, a whisper—slides under the office door. You’re not done. You’ve barely started.

That was when I found a fresh file on the corner of my desk, no return address, just a title stamped in heavy block letters: Beyond Order. It wasn’t a case file in the usual sense. More like a set of instructions from a man who’s been down his own dark alleys and lived to sketch the map. Dr. Jordan B. Peterson was offering twelve more “rules for life,” and I had the feeling they weren’t about tidying up the mess. They were about finding the kind of order that can survive the mess.

The Fourth Witness, Dr. Jordan Peterson

Dr. Jordan B. Peterson takes the witness stand. His credentials are not in the form of a badge, but in the grit of hard-lived experience and the years he has spent mapping the inner corridors of the human mind. His central claim is straightforward: put your world in order so you can stand when chaos comes calling.

But the testimony quickly reveals a deeper undercurrent. Order is not a fixed destination. It is a moving target. Left too long untouched, yesterday’s perfect framework will harden into a cage. The title Beyond Order nods to this paradox. If 12 Rules for Life offered an antidote to chaos, its sequel asks the question: what happens when order itself becomes the problem? The Tao would agree — the moment you stop flowing, you start dying.

In Rule 2, “Imagine who you could be, and then aim single-handedly at that,” Peterson calls his readers toward a living, evolving ideal. He closes the chapter with a vision that sounds almost like Lao-Tzu himself: “You will then find yourself turning across time, incrementally and gracefully, to aim ever more accurately at that tiny pinpoint, the X that marks the spot, the bull’s-eye, and the center of the cross; to aim at the highest value of which you can conceive.” The journey is never a straight shot. The mark shifts as you grow.

Then there is Rule 6, “Abandon Ideology,” which could be read as a caution against mistaking structure for truth. “We have spent too much time... clamoring about rights, and we are no longer asking enough of the young people we are socializing,” he warns. “We have been telling them for decades to demand what they are owed by society... Because we have been doing this, they have grown up looking in the wrong places. And this has left them vulnerable: vulnerable to easy answers and susceptible to the deadening force of resentment.”

Here, too, the Taoist thread runs quietly in the background. Lao-Tzu warned against clinging to rigid patterns. Peterson issues the same warning in modern terms: even the most carefully constructed system must breathe, bend, and change. The “rules” are not the end of the case; they are tools for the next investigation.

Clue takeaway: Even in order, you are always preparing for the next beginning.

Assembling the Clues

I spread the files out across the desk one last time, rain tapping a restless rhythm on the office window. The pieces were all here. The Tao was a well that never ran dry, its waters feeding each new moment without ever losing depth. Deconstruction was no wrecking ball of despair, but demolition in service of something stronger, something freer. The stories I wrote never obeyed “The End,” their characters slipping off the page and into the next chapter without asking permission. And the rules? They were never meant to be walls. They were scaffolding — something to climb, something to outgrow.

The Case of the Endless Beginning? Turns out it was never about catching an ending at all. Life is a spiral staircase. You keep passing the same scenery, but always from a higher floor. Every closed file is just another folder waiting for your fingerprints. You do not retire from this work. You just keep walking into the next night, because that is where the next beginning waits.