Transition leads to growth

Endings can be unpleasant business. It doesn’t matter if we’re ending a relationship, saying goodbye to a loved one, leaving a job or moving away from home, the fact that we’re turning away from the familiar and moving toward the unknown leaves us disquieted. We are apt to avoid endings for this reason. This might be why so many of us botch our endings; we don’t practice them often enough.

Yet though endings are difficult, they are important because they beget new beginnings. If you think back on your life to all the endings you’ve experienced, you will recognize how endings, even those you hadn’t chosen for yourself, led you to someplace new, and hopefully, someplace better. Some call the ending-new beginning cycle growth.

If you reflect deeply enough about endings, soon or later you’ll find yourself contemplating death, for what is death but life's natural ending. I think it’s good to contemplate our final ending for a couple reasons. First, if we reflect on how we’ve spent our lives thus far and find areas we haven’t yet perfected, we still have time to improve: We can tell people we love them before we leave, so they never have to wonder; we can try a hobby we dreamed of trying but didn’t because we couldn’t find time; we can examine how we use our time and redirect energy into making a difference for others.

It’s also worth contemplating how our ending affects us. This exercise is made easier when belief in an after life, which assumes the existence of God, is part of your composition. By reflecting on all the descriptions of Heaven you’ve ever heard or read and on all the advice you’ve ever been offered on how to gain access, it becomes easier to examine life – our years of action or inaction – and bring to an end some of the activities that lead us away from eternal happiness.

On the night my sister-in-law Lynn passed away, I got a few minutes with her. I sat at the edge of her bed, took her hand and kissed her cheek. She looked at me and both of us knew it was time to say goodbye. Then she said two things: "It's so hard," and "I'm not afraid."

“It’s so hard,” refers to the stage in her transition called ending. It was hard for her to say goodbye to all of us, hard to let go.

“I’m not afraid,” refers to the stage of transition called a new beginning. Lynn knew a better existence waited for her beyond the walls of her hospital room and wasn’t afraid to embrace it.

It’s been said we gain the gift of clarity as we age – or as we approach our ending. I think Lynn captured perfectly the trouble most of us have with endings: the unpleasantness in endings blinds us to the potential that lies in our new beginnings. Endings are hard; new beginnings are nothing to be afraid of.