Closing Cycles

One always has to know when a stage comes to an end.

If we insist on staying longer than the necessary
time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the
other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles,
shutting doors, ending chapters - whatever name we
give it, what matters is to leave in the past the
moments of life that have finished.

Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come
to an end? Did you leave your parents' house? Gone to
live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all
of a sudden?

You can spend a long time wondering why this has
happened. You can tell yourself you won't take another
step until you find out why certain things that were
so important and so solid in your life have turned
into dust, just like that.

But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for
everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife,
your friends, your children, your sister, everyone
will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves,
getting on with life, and they will all feel bad
seeing you at a standstill.

None of us can be in the present and the past at the
same time, not even when we try to understand the
things that happen to us. What has passed will not
return: we cannot for ever be children, late
adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards
our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair
with someone who has gone away and has not the least
intention of coming back.

Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them
really go away.

That is why it is so important (however painful it may
be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things
away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have
at home. Everything in this visible world is a
manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going
on in our hearts - and getting rid of certain memories
also means making some room for other memories to take
their place.

Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from
them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so
sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect
anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be
appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love
to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional
television to watch the same program over and over
again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a
certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing
else.

Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love
relationships that are broken off, work that is
promised but there is no starting date, decisions that
are always put off waiting for the "ideal moment."
Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be
finished: tell yourself that what has passed will
never come back. Remember that there was a time when
you could live without that thing or that person -
nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This
may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it
is very important.

Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or
arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your
life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the
house, shake off the dust. Stop being who you were,
and change into who you are.

- author unknown

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