The End or the Beginning?

A beau­ti­ful spring day ends with clouds and a storm, but the storm ends with a clear spring day. Spring becomes sum­mer; sum­mer becomes fall; fall becomes win­ter; win­ter becomes spring. Where one sea­son ends and the other begins is really not all that appar­ent. The shifts are sub­tle, until one can finally say that it is fully spring or fall. Stars burnout, col­lapse, explode, become dust…the dust col­lects other dust and col­lapses into the cre­ation of a new star. Infancy becomes child­hood which blos­soms into ado­les­cence, then to adult­hood, mid­dle age, old age, then…

Every­thing around us screams con­stant change with end­less end­ings and begin­nings that fade into one another. Mat­ter becomes energy which even­tu­ally becomes mat­ter again. Time and space play cos­mic ping pong (except both sides of the table hit the ball at the same time). That which appears sta­tic is actu­ally dynamic. A tree lives and dies at the same time — as with all other liv­ing things. Even when you are asleep you are some­what awake.

We only know who we are tem­porar­ily. Who we were and who we will be remains a mys­tery to us now. It is rather silly to try to fix­ate at any stage. Talk about an illu­sion! You really can’t stay twenty-one for­ever — in fact — not even for a day. Time is just too per­sis­tent. The ends and begin­nings are con­stant. The ocean tides never cease. The world con­tin­ues to turn. Day­light and dark are always temporary.

One key to a healthy emo­tional life is found in this sin­gle idea: to hap­pily antic­i­pate a new begin­ning more than you fear an end.