Making Peace with Endings
Everything that has a beginning has an ending. Make peace with that and all will be well -Jack Kornfield
All things in life, all things, begin and end, this is the nature of life, and all aspects of life. All things in life exist on a spectrum, or within a polarity, for one thing to exist, a beginning, its opposite must also exist, an ending. There can never be a beginning without an end and there can never be an ending without a beginning. It is common for endings to be a challenging time, a time of struggle, a time of longing and wishing; however, it is often not the ending of things that brings us sorrow, it is our longing for things to have not ended that causes us to suffer. It is our wishing for things to be a way that they can never be again that results in grief, sadness, and depression. It is our struggle with attachment to beginnings and acceptance of endings that brings about discomfort and dissatisfaction not the ending in and of itself. We become attached to and comfortable with the beginning and even the middle; however, the end is so final and new we do not know how to comprehend it and we long for the familiarity of what was. As human beings we are programmed to be drawn to what we know, regardless of how beneficial it is to us or our well-being; if it didn’t kill us our brain counts it as a win. Our brains operate by recognizing stimuli we have experienced before to draw on past experiences that we survived to illicit a reaction. Our brains do not consider whether injury or heartbreak occurred; to our brains not dying equals safety which the brain views as success. Due to the brains reliance on past experiences to call on future action we are more likely to behave how we behaved in the past to live through a similar situation than we are to act in a new way. In order to behave the way we have in the past we need the elements of the past to exist and when they do not exist (because of some ending) we cannot act how we used to act with the same outcome which causes distress. It makes our brain feel like we are in danger and we long for a time when we felt safe.
When our brains are presented with novel stimuli they panic and look for any situation that is remotely close to the one we are experiencing. When we are presented with an ending the brain goes into panic mode as we are moving into uncharted territory and our brain’s job is to ensure we are safe. When things end we ache and long for what we knew, what felt comfortable and safe, not because it was best for us but simply because we knew it. We try to hold onto the past as if by holding onto it we can somehow pull it back into our lives. We spend hours thinking about what it would be like had the ending not happened, had things been different, the things we would do and say; however, this type of thinking is a waste of our life. This type of wishing is wasting the present moment, it is robbing us of becoming aware of the beginnings that exists as soon as the ending occurs. We need endings if they did not exist no new thing would ever begin. All things in life are fleeting. That is what makes life so magical, the impermanence of it all. We never know when an ending will come, we only know that at some point it will come. Our purpose is to experience, to learn, to grow, and to love. Our purpose is to experience the begin, the middle, and the end so that we may welcome the next beginning.
If we are able to acknowledge that all things that begin will end we can truly be present through all aspects of our life. If we can welcome in endings, knowing they are just as important as beginnings we can truly live our life. If we can find comfort with endings, knowing that the discomfort they can bring will end too, we can accept all this life has to offer.
