Closed the Cycle

Closing Cycle [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 cans pend 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 maybe!) 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.

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17 July 2005

I've closed the cycle.

I'm really not sure if its the right thing to do. I love her so much. But I guess I really felt short of what was enough. I thought I gave it my all, but maybe I didn't give anything at all.

I had a foot outside the door. But now I guess I had to drag the other foot outside and close the door.

I'm slowly caving in. Retreating to the comforts of my inner self. My life has hit another winter. I have to hibernate.

Goodbye. It shouldn't be this way.