Endings and New Beginnings

Last night, I finished reading A Memory Of Light, the final installment in the Wheel Of Time series by Robert Jordan.  I began reading this fourteen book series way back in 1993, and for the last twenty years, it has been part of my life, accompanying me on my journey, through the changes I made in my life, and as I took a chance and discovered my true path.  As I approached the final few chapters of the final climatic volume, I was filled with a mix of emotions. I was happy that finally, I was going to discover how the story would end, and at the same time, I had another deeper feeling, one that came as a surprise. 

It began as I passed the half way point of the book.  There were now more pages that I had read, than there were remaining, and I knew that the end was approaching.  At this pivotal moment, a feeling began to grow within me.  At first it was easy to ignore, but with each proceeding evening, as I lay in bed reading, it grew stronger.  Eventually, as I faced the final few chapters, I had an overwhelming feeling that I did not want to actually finish the book.  Why was that?  Surely, I wished to know how everything worked out at the end?  Didn't I want to have the ending revealed and to know how each of the vast array of characters, and each of the many different story threads, would resolve themselves?  Yes I did, but at the same time, I did not.  This contradiction may seem like an odd set of emotions to occur, but actually, despite the absurdity of it, it made perfect sense to me.

You see, reading that last sentence and closing the book would finally end something that had been part of my life for so many years.  I had grown comfortable and familiar with having these books to read, with always waiting for the next installment to be published (time between each successive publication grew), with re-immersing myself into an alternative world that I had grown to know and love, with its myriad of characters that had personalities and behaviours that were so familiar to me, these people that seemed like old friends, and I never quite knew if the series would reach its conclusion, since Robert Jordan unfortunately died in 2007 before he had completed writing the final books.  To turn the final page would mean an end to all of this for me.  It would be a bitter sweet moment.  One that would bring me great joy and satisfaction and at the same time, it would bring with it a sadness and loss.  So, I began to think about endings and what they mean.

The end.  It's over.  Finished.  No more.  One moment you have it, you are immersed in it, your senses and emotions are connected to it, you're holding on to it, it's part of you, you are part of it.  And then suddenly you're not.  It's gone.  Blank.  Darkness.  Emptiness.  Sadness and loss.  Wishing you could go back again, to relive some of those times when you held it, when it held you.  But you cannot.  It feels as though a part of you is gone and only a hole remains.  You feel incomplete, no longer whole, as a piece of you is now missing.  And you fear what comes next, because it is unknown, it is going to be different.

Often, an ending seems negative.  That is because of the sense of loss that we feel and the feeling of emptiness that remains.  The endings that are particularly difficult are those that are forced upon us and those that involve the end of something that we have grown accustomed to having in our life.  Graduating from college, leaving home for the first time, leaving a long-term employment, the break up of a relationship, the death of a loved one.  Each of these marks a significant life event.  Each one represents an ending.  Equally as important though, is that each one represents something else.  A beginning.

An end is an important step along the path.  Each of us must face and deal with many endings on our journey, if we are to continue to seek out the light and obtain our dreams.  Without an ending, there can be no new beginnings.  With no end, there can be no new opportunity to learn and to grow, to discover new emotions, new places, new people, new experiences, and there can be no opportunity to evolve our soul.  Endings are a necessary part of the journey.

It is natural not to want an ending to something that you enjoy and love.  With the end, comes the unknown and with the unknown, comes fear.  Many people resist change simply because they are afraid of the unknown.  They prefer to stay in situations that they understand and can deal with, even though those situations maybe harmful, hurtful, negative and detrimental to their life.  Fear is a deeply paralysing emotion.   Through fear of the unknown comes a resistance to end, and because there is no ending for this person, there can be nothing new, there can be no evolution of the soul.

I see the end as simply the beginning.  It is the cycle of life in which we all exist.  Many beginnings, many endings.  Many endings, many beginnings.  It is how it has always been and it is how it always will be.  There is a saying that as one door closes, so another door opens.  The meaning is clear, an end is necessary in order to create some space in your life for something new.  Each time an end occurs, so too does a new beginning.  Each ending brings you a new opportunity.  It is actually a positive occurrence in life.  Even if at the time you cannot view it as such because the pain, resentment and bitterness of your loss is hard to bear, eventually, with hindsight, it will be possible to view it as such.

We need endings in our lives.  In life, everything eventually ends, so I guess we should get used to that notion.  Don't fear the end, instead, look forward to a new beginning, to a new opportunity that can be taken, to evolving your soul through growth.  Each new beginning leads you further along your path, brings you closer to the discovery of your dream.  I finished reading my book and as I closed it, I thanked Robert Jordan for keeping me company over all of these years, and I knew that now, I had created a little space for something new to come into my life.       

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This post is dedicated to the memory of Marge.  It was Marge who lent me her copy of The Wheel Of Time all those years ago and started me on that particular journey.  It was Marge who saw within me a caring heart and who was the first person to acknowledge that to me.  Thank you for the beginning, and thank you for the end.  I'll see you again one day my friend.

Just As The Rolling Stones Said

Yesterday, I held a friend's four week old baby on my lap and, as I looked down on this miracle of life, I was taken back in time, to one summer many years ago, and I wondered how my life might have been so completely different.  I asked myself if I will ever have a child of my own to hold and to bestow upon them the love and the wisdom that I have to give.  And I asked myself whether I will ever get to fulfill my destiny as a man, and to become a father, or did I miss my chance?

I have learned that life takes us where we need to go and that the journey is not always in the direction that we may wish.  One summer, many years ago, life decided that my path would go a different way from the one that I was expecting it to take.  Back then, I was very much in love, thought I had found my soul mate, I was enjoying a career that was rocketing forward faster than I could believe, my brother was going to be married, and I, unbeknown to my family, was going to be a father.  It was an incredibly exciting time.  Then fate twisted the knife and the picture that I held in my mind of the happily ever after, family man was destroyed beyond all recovery.  Everything was lost to me in just a few words of a conversation, in just a few seconds of time.  As the words fell, so too did the pieces of my life, fragments falling to the floor and shattering, like the most fragile pieces of fine porcelain.

I don't think about this moment too often, but now that I do, I see it with a new perspective.  There was my chance of fatherhood being taken away from me and at the time, so too was the way in which I saw my future.  In the darkness that followed, and days of falling through the abyss of deep, dark, despair and depression, I could see no way ahead.  I felt only loss, the loss of my soul mate from my life and the loss of my chance for fatherhood.  One moment I had stood, basking in the rays of warm light, in love and going to become a father, the next, I stood in the darkness, utterly alone with my loss.  The days that followed, the weeks and the months, were difficult.  I was lucky to have a very good friend who helped me through it, who dragged me out and would not let me stay in my stupor and malaise.  He laughed as I hit golf balls one evening at the driving range and said that each one must have had the face of my ex.  I laughed along, not able to tell him that he was wrong, that I was still in love and that I felt no anger, just sorrow at my loss.  I recovered, just as everyone always does, but it took me a long time.

Now that I think about that evening, when my world shifted completely, I know that everything that has occurred in my life since, would never have come to fruition.  On one hand, I lost my chance of fatherhood and family life, but on the other, I have everything else.  I am not bitter about what happened.  In fact, I am thankful because it has allowed me to accomplish everything that I have, and to experience so many wonderful things in my life.  It allowed me to discover my true path in life, the path that has true meaning for me.

I will never know where the other path would have led me.  I never think back and wonder about it.  There is no point and I consider that as wasted time and energy.  My feelings tell me that things would not have worked out, they could not have worked out.  I have this deep feeling that at the time I was still not ready.  Perhaps I would have been able to adapt and evolve myself, I will never know and so there is little point in thinking on it.  My path took a new direction, life had another purpose for me, and life took me to a place I could never have dreamed.  From that point in my life, which was probably one of my lowest, everything changed and life has given me so many wonderful gifts and opportunities.  It tells me that we should never give up, even when all hope seems to be lost and gone, because it never is.

I my still be childless, I may still not be a father, but I do know that my time will come.  Yesterday, as I held that tiny bundle of life, I knew beyond doubt that I want that for myself.  I would like to be a father, I would like to be a husband.  Sometimes in life, we can't always get what we want, but if we try, we often get what we need.

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How You Know When Your Broken Heart Is Mended

The ending of any relationship hits you hard.  When you are still in love with your partner and wish the relationship to continue, then it becomes harder still.  Who am I kidding?  Let's face it, when your partner tells you that things are over, that they do not love you any more, that what they want from life is different to those things that you want, that is completely and utterly soul destroying.  It's a gut wrenching, heart shattering moment, and that moment can last for an exceedingly long time.  That moment feels like it will last for an eternity.

When your partner tells you it is over, it is not just that you lose that person from your life, there is also the loss of love that you must face.  Other unwanted feelings and sensations will come your way as well.  You feel a sense of rejection, you feel that you are not worthy of love, you feel yourself as being not good enough for love, and you will feel that you are worthless.  None of these are of course remotely true.  But it doesn't matter how many times you are told that, or by how many people, you will believe it until the pain begins to subside.

When my last relationship went wrong, it was my then girlfriend who broke it off.  It was her decision to say enough is enough.  I had loved her deeply, I had spent much of my time devoted to her, doing all that I could to help and assist her with various projects and the problems that she encountered during our time together.  When it came to the end, my heart was still very much attached to her.  Physically, we were no longer together, so that helped immensely with our separation, but mentally, that was a whole different ball game.

It's not just the mental attachments we make though is it?  It is the attachments that we make with our hearts.  It is the love that is the hardest to let go of, that takes the longest to heal.  From the moment that the relationship breaks up, the healing process begins.  It does not feel like any healing is taking place for some weeks, or even months, but subtle changes are being made within you, within the subconscious you.  One day, you wake up and you know that your heart is mended, that the pain and heartache you have been living is gone.  It is over.  It can take many months, or even sometimes years for that the healing process to be complete, so much depends on the intensity and the longevity of the relationship and the love.

For me, my heart means everything and that means that it suffers greatly at the hands of love.  When I fall in love, I fall very deeply and I love with great passion and intensity.  I cannot do anything else because to do so, would be to betray my heart.  There is no half love.  Love is an all encompassing feeling that you either feel, or you do not.  You cannot think you are in love.  If you think you are in love, then you are not.  Love is a balls to bone emotion of the greatest intensity there is.  When my relationship broke up last November, it hurt.  I had to deal with the feelings of rejection and the pain of being pushed away from the person that I loved.  I wondered how long it would take me to get over this love.  How long would it take for my heart to be fully healed?  Today, I think I found the answer to that question.

On the boat this morning was a girl called Vanessa.  At first, she was just another customer, another soul who was coming diving.  As I gave the dive briefing to her and the other two divers in the group, I suddenly saw Vanessa for the first time.  She was looking up at me as I spoke and as I looked down at her, my eyes saw into hers and I became lost for a moment.  I don't think that I paused or hesitated in my dive briefing, but I knew that something significant had happened.  And my heart knew it too.  During the morning, I was my usual self with all of the customers but I knew I was attracted to Vanessa, in a way I had not felt for a long time about someone else.  Nothing happened between us and the story ends there, but for me, it marked a significant event.

I could not have felt that attraction to Vanessa unless my heart was clear of my ex-girlfriend.  That is the way in which my heart works.  I cannot betray my heart and so I can never betray anyone, if I have feelings towards them.  This moment on the boat with Vanessa told me that finally, my heart has healed itself and that perhaps, I am now ready to move on and that, if another opportunity for love comes my way, I know that I will be ready to embrace it.

So, how do you know that your broken heart is mended?  You know it, when you look into the eyes of someone and you find yourself falling into them, and you realise that you could become lost in those eyes unless you pull your gaze away.  And, at the same time, you feel a jolt of electricity in your heart.  That jolt is the thunderbolt of love.  These are the signs that let you know that you are ready.  And because of this, today, I finally know that my heart is ready to love again.  Today, I feel ready to walk the path of love once more.  Now I ask, who will be my companion and when will she arrive? 

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Why You Must Never Lose Sight Of Your One True Path

Why You Must Never Lose Sight of the One True Path

One thing that I have never been afraid to do, is to admit to my mistakes.  Only by admitting to the errors and missteps that we make in life, can we ever hope to learn from them and to lay them to rest.  Last year, I made a mistake.  To be honest, last year I made more than one mistake, after all I am human, so I am prone to making them.  Life would be rather dull without the odd mistake every now and again.  So, what was the mistake that I made?  It was this:-

I stepped away from my own one true path, so that I could follow my heart in the pursuit of love for another person.

The pursuit of love.  Isn't that the most glorious and noble pursuit of all?  I think so.  I've always thought so and I don't think I will ever change that opinion.  Call me romantic.  I've always believed in the power of love and I always will.  Love is in everything.  Love created the universe.  Love created life.  Love is at the very centre of all things.  So, what then was the problem with going in pursuit of love of another person and why was that a mistake?  Last year I discovered the answers and I learned some very valuable lessons in life in the process.

I fell in love with a girl that I'll call Beatrix.  Beatrix lived far way in another country and literally, in another time.  We maintained our relationship in the virtual world of e-mail and Facebook, as well as using Skype to talk with, and to see each other, almost every evening.  I think we both knew that in order to maintain the relationship over the long term, it was necessary for one of us to move and go to the other.  My lifestyle is transient.  My situation and the nature of my work allows me to travel.  Moving from place to place is in my blood.  It's what I do.  Moving has never been an issue for me.  I do it a lot.  I've always been moving from place to place all of my life, even from an early age.  Back then it was because of my parents and probably some part of the moving home and the constant changes in life that they gave to their kids, has stayed with me.  My mother always claimed that she had the Romany spirit and perhaps I inherited that from her.  The romantic in me would certainly like to believe that this is true.  Living in a new country equally is no problem for me.  I've had the fortune to have done that a few times and I've lived overseas now for ten out of the last eleven years and it is something that I enjoy.  Through living overseas, I've come to understand one simple fact: that all people on this planet have exactly the same needs and wants in life, regardless of race, colour, religious beliefs, or sociopolitical system.  Or to put it rather more simply: we are one.  So moving abroad, which is a strange term to apply here, since I already lived overseas, was not an issue for me.  It was easy to swap one country for another, since I no longer hold a particularly firm attachment to any country.  It was not the change of country that created my problem.

As soon as I first arrived in my new home, I found myself immediately caught up in the life of Beatrix.  There seemed to be an endless list of tasks that needed to be completed around her apartment.  That was not a problem for me as I like helping people, I enjoy feeling useful, and I had a lot of free time on my hands.  So, I got stuck in and found myself busy with chores of all kinds.  This set the pattern for what was to follow for the next five months.  Part way through my stay and I am unable to recall now how it came to pass, Beatrix decided that she would like to repaint her apartment and I volunteered my services.  I undertook a redecorating project of the entire apartment, carrying out minor repair work, preparing all of the walls and ceilings for painting, and then painting all of those walls and ceilings.  My time was no longer my own and I worked hard during the day because I not only wanted to help Beatrix, I also wanted to make her happy.

During the course of the summer, I was to discover that situations would arise that would require me to give my time and attention to Beatrix.  There always seemed to be something that was going wrong or there was some new crisis that needed to be resolved.  I continually helped her as best as I was able, giving my time, giving my knowledge and experience, in fact, giving everything that I could possibly give, in order to make her life better and to help her fix whatever was wrong at the time.

Between my chores, the painting project and devoting my time to the other problems that seemed to occur, my days were usually full, doing things for Beatrix.  As I became more comfortable living in the apartment and more comfortable in our lives together, I began to shop for groceries, to clean the apartment, to take care of the laundry and to cook our evening meals, so that they were ready for when Beatrix arrived after work.  I had become a house husband.

It is important to say also, that during the summer that I spent with Beatrix, there were good times.  There was fun and laughter, there were great times that we spent together and there was romance.  We enjoyed amazing days out, we went to restaurants and ate great food, and we shared new experiences together, I met her friends and her family.  We were two people in love.

The problem that I faced was that almost from the very beginning of our relationship, I had started to forget about myself.  Everything that Beatrix needed came first.  Her needs, her desires, her wants, all came before my own.  And this was not necessarily her fault.  I let it happen.  I didn't take a stand when I should have done.  I had forsaken all of my own needs and found myself consumed by the needs of another person.  Beatrix was just being herself.  I was the one who began to lose himself and although I did not realise it at the time, I began to suffer.  All the time that we lived apart, it did not seem to matter too much that I spent my evenings talking with Beatrix, listening to her problems.  I had my own job and my own life in Costa Rica.  I was doing something that I loved to do.  I was on my own path, living the dream that I had created for myself and I was in love with a beautiful girl called Beatrix.  Life was amazing and I was extremely happy.

But after I had moved into Beatrix's apartment, I had none of my old life available to me.  No longer was I doing that which gave me passion.  I was away from the ocean that I loved so much.  I was away from the work that I love to do.  Rather than living in a rural community in Costa Rica, only a couple of minutes walk from the beach, surrounded by jungle and nature, I now found myself living in the suburbs of a major city, surrounded by concrete and asphalt.  The natural world feeds my soul and it was incredibly difficult to find nourishment in the heart of this sprawling metropolis in which I now found myself.  I didn't realise this at first simply because I had been following my heart and pursuing the love that I held for Beatrix.  As far as I was concerned, following my heart meant that I was still walking my one true path.  I thought that they were one and the same thing.  They are not.

I had given up on my one true path.  I had crossed onto the path of another person and I tried to make it my own, through the love that I held for Beatrix.  It took me some time to realise this.  I was sure that through the love of another person it was possible to change your path.  I was certain that love, the greatest and most powerful of all human emotions, would enable me to do just that, and to remain happy and content on my new path.  I had not understood the strength and power of my own passions and dreams. I had completely failed to understand that it is not possible to give up on those things that give purpose and meaning to your life, without suffering a great loss.  As much as I loved Beatrix, I would never be able to sustain that love and it could never replace that which I had lost.

Why?  Because what I gave up was that which makes me the person who I am.  I gave up those things that are the very essence of me.  They are part of the fabric of my being and an integral part of my soul.  Without them, I simply cease to be me.  I become a different person.  I become less than the person that I am when I am walking on my one true path.  I change.  I know that I do.  Even if I do not want that to happen, it is not possible to prevent it, no more than it would be possible to take the colour indigo out of a rainbow and still call it a rainbow.  It would still be a beautiful thing to behold, but it would be less than it was.  Less than perfect.  The happiness that I feel when I walk my one true path in life comes from deep within me, and it permeates throughout everything that I do.  Away from my path, I do not find that same sense of deep happiness and contentment.

What I learned last year was that in order to find love in another person, it is necessary never to give up on your own one true path.  It is necessary to hold on to those things that make you the person who you are, and it is necessary to hold on to them at all costs.  Nothing is worth sacrificing your own path for, not even the love of another.  I never thought that was true, but now I know the truth of it because I lived and breathed that lesson.  The path to true and lasting love with another person lies not on the path of another, it can only be found along your own path.  Only when the two paths of the lovers meet and coincide with each other, can there be a lasting love.  The love that is found must flow back and forth between each of the two people, crossing the divide that separates each of their paths.  Never give up your own dreams for the love of another person.  The right person will appear on your path when the time is right.  And that person will have been worth the wait and worth the walk.  Love does conquer all, but if you give up on your own dreams, you give up on the love of self.  And that can never be a true and lasting love since it is no longer a complete love.  It becomes less than perfect.

I learned my lesson the hard way.  I fell in love with a beautiful girl whose name was Beatrix and I lost that love.  I lost sight of my one true path and I lost sight of who I am.  But along the way, I gained knowledge, I gained insight and I gained enlightenment.  I enjoyed the knowledge that I was in love with another soul and that soul returned my love.  And for that, I will always be truly grateful.  Thank you Beatrix.

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