Closing Cycles, by Paolo Coelho

For lack of awe-inspiring original thought, today I bring to you another person's words. This is quite a long article, and I'm putting it here simply because I like the last line: "Stop being who you were, and change into who you are."

It's going to be the start of another year soon, and it's going to be another chance to redefine who we are and who we want to be.

Good luck.

---

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? Had a loving relationship come to an end? Did
you leave your parents' house? Gone to live abroad? Had a long-lasting
friendship end 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 h usband 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 forever 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.