closing cycles

an officemate forwarded this email to me the other day... it might be of help to someone....

Closing Cycles -- By Paolo Coelho

One always has to know when a stage comes to an end.

If we insist on staying longer than the necessarytime,

we lose the happiness and the meaning of theother stages we have to go through.

Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters whatever name we giveit,

what matters is to leave in the past the moments

of life that have finished.

Did you lose your job?

Has a loving relationship cometo an end?

Did you leave your parents' house?

Gone to live abroad?

Has a long-lasting friendship ended allof a sudden?

You can spend a long time wondering why this hashappened.

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 foreveryone 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 notreturn: 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 maybe!)

to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things

away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you haveat 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 acertain loss:

that is only poisoning you, nothingelse.

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 befinished:

tell yourself that what has passed willnever 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 itis 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 thehouse, shake off the dust.

Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.