Closing Cycle
by 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.
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.
