First, Last and Notable in Between.

We give a lot of attention to firsts. Firsts get all the glory. Lasts just tend to be sad.

There are absolute firsts, recurring firsts and individual firsts. All of them are significant, or at least relevant, depending on your point of view. There will only ever be one first man on the moon. The first day of spring is something we look forward to every year. Your first kiss is probably more important to you than to anyone else, just as your first day of school is memorialized in your family photo album but unlikely to make front page news.

Firsts are not always without controversy. The history we are taught is often shaped by who does the telling, and the glory for being first accompanies the storyteller despite evidence to the contrary. Caveats and provisos can narrow the scope of a first, or make a first where one didn't previously exist. The first to climb Everest without oxygen has a different name next to it.

While this might sound like splitting hairs in a chase for glory, it's just as true that there is a compounding of firsts that build upon each other. Achievements that stand on the shoulders of others. Sometimes this debt is acknowledged in interesting ways and join a fraternity of sorts. Neil Armstrong carried a piece of wood from the Wright Brother's1903 airplane propellor and a piece of fabric from the wing.

Lasts are tougher. Some are obvious, while many are temporary. The significance of an event may not be apparent at the time, and only later gain significance. Mystery sometimes shrouds lasts, Conspiracy theories and unanswered questions linger as an asterisk. What was thought to be the last, is sometimes rediscovered. We have to learn to live with a certain messiness when we deal with the lasts.

Where firsts seem to be celebrated, the last of anything often comes with regret. The last words spoken between two people or the last live performance of a musician, the last lonely holdout before a species is extinct.

Sometimes a leap of faith is required. There's an adage - you can't cross a chasm in two small jumps. Being first means accepting a degree of risk. Other times it is the product of careful planning and patient experimentation.

Like stepping stones along the pathway, the events and achievements that bridge the distance from what was first and what was last, are often essential and can be extraordinarily interesting. Like a bell curve, most of life happens between when we start and when we finish.