so what's next?
When yas first asked me to read this, I was numb, I wasn't sure if it was the right time to embrace it.
I think now is the perfect time to post this.
No more apologies for anyone this time around.
***
Closing Cycles
P. Coelho
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 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 forever 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.