A few years back, I had a hard time dealing with change and goodbyes. However, little by little, my discipline as a Trainer/HR Practitioner and life in general has taught me that change signify new beginnings and better things coming into our life. As I face the challenges of being a woman and wife today, I now embrace change and look forward to new beginnings. I now believe that with every closing door, there are windows (or even new doors) that will be opened for you.
Below is an inspiring essay by Paolo Coehlo on ending chapters and moving on.
Closing Cycles
By Paolo Coelho
One always has to know when a stage comes to an end. If we insist onstaying 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 momentsof life that have finished. Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents' house? Gone tolive 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 thingsthat were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, justlike 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 onwith 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 anaffair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention ofcoming 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 youhave 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 ofcertain memories also means making some room for other memories to taketheir 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 notexpect 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, theone that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is onlypoisoning 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, decisionsthat are always put off waiting for the ideal moment. Before a new chapteris 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 couldlive without that thing or that person. Nothing is irreplaceable. A habitis 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 simplybecause 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.
