violent dispersal

A piece by Paulo Coelho entitled ‘Closing Cycles’:
(Salamat Bonn)

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
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.
          

This entry was posted on Sunday, February 25th, 2007 at 10:36 pm and is filed under melancholy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.