Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending. (Lazarus Long)
What we call the beginning is often the end. And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from. (T.S. Eliot)
“It is finished.”
Yesterday I spoke these words. The final, court-approved, attorney-certified documentation arrived. I am no longer married.
It’s an end, to be sure. The end of meaningful, something beautiful, something painful, something
rich, something deeply significant.
All endings bring a sense of grief (even when you’re the one who has chosen such). There is a finality that is weighty and cannot be escaped.
Endings also signify new beginnings. That reality feels weightless; one that is unbounded, unrestrained, unknown, and unfettered. And I find myself, at least today, more compelled (and comforted) by others’ words instead of my own…
You’re searching…for things that don’t exist; I mean beginnings. Ends and beginnings – there are no such things. There are only middles. (Robert Frost)
I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, about having to change, about taking the moment and making the best of it – and all without knowing what’s going to happen next.
Delicious Ambiguity.
(Gilda Radner)
My life – yesterday and today – feels like a book. Yesterday I ended one chapter, even somewhat tragically. Today, I am anticipating what is yet to come, I turn the page and find the next one blank. A clean slate. White as snow. Anxious and excited for the pen to hit the page and create a new text, new plots, new characters, new experiences. What will this story yet tell?
The secret to a rich life is to have more beginnings than endings.(David Weinbaum)
There is a woman at the beginning of all great things. (Alphonse de Lamartine)
Every day is a fresh beginning, Every morn is the world made new. (Sarah Chauncey Woolsey)
“It is finished.” And…it is just beginning.
May it be so.