This one's a very inspiring read from the international best selling author
Paolo Coelho. Hope you like reading this one.
Closing
Cycles
By Paolo Coelho (the author of
THE ALCHEMIST)
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 ce! rtain 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 liv! e 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.
"Love is a commitment of the
heart that will stand the test of wavering emotions, intellectual rationalizing,
circumstantial allure, hormonal infatuation, and even the wounds of your lover.
Anything less is not true love."
