Forrest Gump said that life is like a box of chocolates.

I am not ready to contradict such an exemplary philosophical mind, but I think I might be tempted to add an asterisk to his statement.

Life is a series of beginnings and endings. 

Endings really are like a box of chocolates. You never know what you're going to get. There are endless variations, many of them tragic and unfortunate, a few neutral, and a modest handful happy and serendipitous.

Beginnings, however, are pretty much all alike. Everybody is born in more or less the same way. Each new step down the path of life is accompanied by the same feelings of anxiety and anticipation. Beginnings are not like a box of chocolates. 

Maybe more like waterslides.

I remember visiting a waterpark when I was a little kid, dragging my 8-year-old self up a steep set of stairs to a platform high, high above the ground. Waiting in line for a long time, watching the people in front of me successively leap into the yawning black mouth of the waterslide and disappear.

My feelings were a sizzling bundle of exuberance and terror, wound tighter with each step I took toward the front of the line. What was the slide going to be like? How steep? Where were the turns? Would I be able to breathe in there?

There was no way to know.

When I finally reached the front of the line, I had only a brief moment to examine the water rushing down the dark, inscrutable tube before the bored high school student at the top gave me the green light and it was time to launch myself inside.

That's how I've felt before every momentous occasion in my life. My first day of college, my mission, my big internship at VML, leaving VML to start a company, and now law school.

That same mixture of excitement and terror.

I don't know what the experience will be like, where the twists and turns will be, or even if I'll be able to breathe inside.

You just throw yourself into the maw of destiny and hope that you have what it takes to survive the ride.

You hope that once you've reached the final twist and the slide spits you out back into the sunshine, you're glad you leapt.

You hope that when it's all over, you get a good chocolate for your trouble, like one of those caramel pretzel ones, and not a cherry cordial.

That's what life is like.