Closing Cycles (P. Coelho)

by paulo 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
maybe!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things
away to
orphan! ages, 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.


Again, stop being who you were, and change into who you
are.