Beginnings, Endings

By Lou Pastina

We enter this world not so much by choice but by the grace of God and the love of our parents. We arrive with not many skills and need constant care and supervision. Our bedtime, our eating times, our nap times are all determined for us by our parents and guardians. As we get older, we start to enter schools, first the various pre-Ks and then elementary. When the time comes for high school, our parents give us some say in where we can go, but ultimately that decision is made by our parents too. We finally start having some say when we leave high school, deciding – do we want to go to college or look for a trade, or maybe travel and see the world. For most of these beginnings, we are following a pretty tight script.

Experiencing the world gives us some insight into how we want to spend our lives. We make friends, find partners, sometimes spouses, become uncles or aunts, sometimes fathers or mothers. These are new beginnings which we have some influence over. Our eyes adjust to how the world really looks and we make choices about how we fit into that world, who we want to be with, and how we want to live it. With each new beginning, we layer on to old beginnings and generate an overlapping time capsule of our lives.

But with all the increased knowledge, we also make choices about what not to continue. Sometimes we decide that certain people, places, situations are not aligned with our core values, and we end those aspects of our lives. Sometimes the endings are abrupt, sometimes they are like an Irish Exit, you kinda just slip out the back door. And of course, we are not the “only” ones making these decisions about beginnings and endings, the entire seven-billion-person population is also making these choices. Which means that sometimes you are the person who has been quietly canceled. But not all these endings are permanent, occasionally they are temporary, and reversed later, and a new beginning is created from an old ending.

The longer we are around, the more the decision making reverts back to the way it was when we entered the world. We cede control to other trusted individuals to make the many choices necessary when we are unable to. There are many religions that believe that the end is not the end. Whether that means we wind up in a new beginning which is not easily imaginable to us mere mortals, or we come back to go through the cycle again, is unclear to me, but it does shine a light on the fact that there are no real endings. I say that because every ending is really only a prelude to a new beginning, one which we may not have entirely chosen, but is upon us, nonetheless. Someone near to me counseled that change is good, and that I have to be open to change, and I believe they are right, although it is sometimes hard to accept. We become enamored with the status quo where its safe and warm. Change brings growth, growth brings the ability to start new beginnings. It’s one continual journey. So, wherever you are in this process, whether you are at a beginning or looking at a potential ending, I wish you calm and peace and the knowledge that no end is permanent, and every beginning can only start at some other ending.