Together and Apart

Once, Together and Apart were a single being. In their harmony, stars were born, worlds were created, and neither separation nor struggle existed. They were that which united and separated equally, the single breath of the universe. But one day, something disrupted their balance. To be one meant to stop evolving, to be two meant to enter into eternal opposition. And they tore themselves apart, becoming mirror images of each other.

Together became the power of creation, a binding link, gravitation. It gathered particles into planets, planets into systems, souls into societies. Its strength lay in unity, in that which creates a whole from disparate parts. Apart became the power of freedom, separation, rupture. It bestowed individuality, allowed that which had exhausted itself to disintegrate, paved paths to the new. They went their separate ways, but with each era, their collisions became inevitable.

They met again and again, giving rise to the movement of time, becoming the causes of life cycles. Together joined matter into stars, but Apart gave birth to supernovae, scattering their light across the infinite space. Together bound hearts, creating love, families, civilizations, but Apart shattered unions, destroyed empires, and led wanderers on solitary paths. It seemed one always followed the other, and their battle could not end.

One day, they clashed in a world that teetered on the brink between chaos and order. Here, beings existed simultaneously as part of a unified consciousness and as free individuals. At this point, their struggle had to end. If Together won, the world would freeze in a single consciousness, without the right to the personal. If Apart prevailed, everything would crumble into dust, leaving only emptiness behind.

The battle began, but this time it did not bring the usual outcome. They fought, merged, tore apart again, and suddenly both realized: their struggle had never been an attempt to destroy each other. It was a longing for what they once were — a single whole. They could never win because they existed only thanks to each other. If one disappeared, so would the other.

Then they reached out to each other. Their merging did not mean a return to the former state, but the birth of a new equilibrium. Not absorption, not disappearance, but the realization that life is not only unity and not only separation, but the movement between them. Thus appeared the world as we know it — in an endless cycle of meetings and partings, unions and ruptures, birth and death. And in this cycle, there are no winners and losers, because Everything exists only thanks to Nothing, and Nothing — thanks to Everything.