The End
Most of the time we don’t want things to end. Endings can be too final, too full of loss. Many endings are out of our control and force us into a new way of life; one that we may not have chosen if given the chance. But some of the endings are placed in our hands like wet pottery on the wheel, giving us the gift of molding them, and building them up into something beautiful. Without an ending there is no beginning again.
I’ve had many types of endings in my life and I have participated in each of them differently. In some I’ve complied with the will of another, letting them make the decisions for me as I allowed things to unfold without much interference on my part. Even if I desperately didn’t want things to end, it felt easier than putting up a fight or saying the words out loud that were burning in my heart. These endings happened before I learned how to break free from the corners I had been corralled into. Where my voice, if too loud, if too contrary, would not have been a welcome sound anyway.
There were the endings where I held on too tightly, even after things were clearly done, and over. The notion of letting go meant that I had to give up control, to lose what I had spent so long building. So I would hold on too long, rehashing the ending over and over again desperately looking for something I could have done differently or words that could have been spoken to alter the inevitable.
Other times I have given up at the first sign of a crack. Better to get away from the situation as soon as possible so that I don’t have to live in that painful space that exists between endings and beginnings.
Endings are a beautiful part of the cycle of rebirth. In nature we find this example over and over again. Supernovas die in an amazing cosmic explosion, scattering elements like gold, carbon, and iron out into space where these materials eventually form new planets. Autumn fosters the dropping of brilliantly colored leaves, shedding life to conserve energy throughout the winter only to burst forth in spring with new growth. These endings are necessary for life and they cannot be rushed, or ignored, or not tended to.
Everything comes and goes and nothing stays. We may not be able to change how things end, call it fate, or fairytale, or fortune. But this one wild and precious life calls for us to honor our endings. To slow down, to feel into them. To speak the words out loud that need to be said. And to ask the question, “what insight can this ending give to me?”
At the end of many yoga asana practices comes the savasana. Savasana is a way to practice the end of something. The literal ending of something can be hard and even more hard is the space in between that ending and the beginning. It’s that liminal space, that meeting point of heaven and earth, that savasana can help us connect with. There is a profound lesson here, one of letting go and the realization that to move forward, we must acknowledge the past. For all new beginnings lie just beyond the confines of our very limited current view.
