Closing Cycles - Paolo 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 in the past the moments of life that have
finished.
We can spend a long time wondering why this has
happened. We can tell ourselves we won’t take another step until we
find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in our
lives have turned into dust, just like that.
But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved. Everyone will
be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life,
and they will all feel bad seeing us 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: 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 we 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 our efforts to be
appreciated, our genius to be discovered, our love to be understood.
Stop turning on our emotional television to watch the same program over
and over again, the one that shows how much we suffered from this loss:
that is only poisoning us, nothing else.
Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off or
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
ourselves that what has passed will never come back. Remember that
there was a time when we could live without each other - 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 our lives. Shut the door, change the record, clean the
house, shake off the dust.
Stop being who we were, and change into who we are.
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.
We can spend a long time wondering why this has
happened. We can tell ourselves we won’t take another step until we
find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in our
lives have turned into dust, just like that.
But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved. Everyone will
be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life,
and they will all feel bad seeing us 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: 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 we 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 our efforts to be
appreciated, our genius to be discovered, our love to be understood.
Stop turning on our emotional television to watch the same program over
and over again, the one that shows how much we suffered from this loss:
that is only poisoning us, nothing else.
Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off or
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
ourselves that what has passed will never come back. Remember that
there was a time when we could live without each other - 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 our lives. Shut the door, change the record, clean the
house, shake off the dust.
Stop being who we were, and change into who we are.