bummin'

- by Paolo Coelho

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.