Beginnings and endings

At the end of every end is always a beginning. Every beginning is a way to the end. Both are thrilling, both are terrifying, but both, and all that happens in between, are the stuff of mystery

Sometimes, I can sense when things are about to end: big things, like coming to peace at the end of a conflict; or bigger things like coming to hard-earned peace at the end of a difficult decision; or the largest thing like coming to peace with oneself upon realizing a feeling one had has finally changed. You see, sometimes, it feels like our feelings about something will never change.

Or sometimes, I can sense when things are about to begin. I hear it as a hum in the universe. Or see it in the relentless work of plants and trees to continue to re-leaf and re-leaf in spite what we have done to ravage the earth. Beginnings can be felt in breath of spirit, when tasks renew their old faces in the morning. Imagine the wonder of the world beginning anew every single day. It questions not what it does, never pauses for metaphysical ennui.

I suspect that one is growing old at the moment one begins to see the lack of difference between the two. When I was younger, there seemed such a great divide. An ending was an ending. A beginning, a beginning. Aging brings a different kind of analysis, and thus, perhaps wisdom.

These days, I am caught in the middle of that flux. Recommendation letters for graduate school, medical school, law school come to my table from old students also in differing times of their lives. This is multi-tonal. To some, it is finally no longer a rehearsal for real life but real life itself. For some, it is a second chance. Mam, I thought I’d try something else. You can feel the fear in these missives, a kind of panicked tone over life gone awry or the fear of it going awry, again.

Mam I didn’t pass law school, I failed my boards, I failed the bar, I wasn’t renewed, I wasn’t made permanent. I ended a relationship. I lost someone. My days are full of coffees, lunches, late night chats over dreams taking detours, over disappointment and crippling fear. I know I cannot teach anything. My only job is to sit by the river with them and weep.

Their stories make me remember. The first job I ever tried? I failed the entrance exam because I didn’t get the instructions. The attempt at law school? I came to the test in pajamas. Was that a sign? The job I really wanted? The superior said I was an inferior woman. I cried all day that day. That job in the family business? Those were my darkest years. That position in a “foreign land”? That was a lesson in humility hard to bear. An acceptance of what I could do and would not do. Not even for love. The landscape I am in now? A garden with difficult soil to till. Do I ever wake up and think myself successful or unsuccessful? Would it surprise you if I said I do not think of either as measurement of my life? I think rather of goodness and grace; of how it abounds wherever I am.

There is a group of plants under my care at home, a nursery of sorts. My mornings and evenings are spent trying to figure out what will make them grow best. It is tricky, the work of figuring out the proper balance of water, sun, and shade. Recently, I was nursing three pots of thyme. In the beginning, they bloomed and perfumed and stretched their small limbs out. As the days passed, they began to stump me alternately turning dry and brown and near death. I moved them around, tried different combinations of water, sun and shade. There is an internal mystery in all things that grow: their inherent capacity to thrive but also die. Sometimes it’s easy to think that the proper combination is the secret. Not always. Some times it is resilience, a stronger bark, strength in the face of elements, timing and luck and sheer plod and magic. It would be crazy to try to control all the elements of fate. I watched my thyme die but felt no panic. For what seems dead is often just changing leaf.

I am often amused with articles that talk about what I would say to my young self, simply because the point is missed. The whole point is to be clueless when one is young; to resent being taught when young; to flail and almost drown when young. It is the way life is designed. Perhaps if the world were not made this way, there would be no point to growing old.

What to say then? To wait and to breathe. To trust your thyme. You will grow. You already are growing. You are certain to bloom, and possibly already are, and you must know that all blooms eventually end. But that’s alright because at the end of every end, is always a beginning. Every beginning is a way to the end. Both are thrilling, both are terrifying, but both, and all that happens in between, are the stuff of mystery.