life seems simple when we are young. We go to school, make friends, get good grades, go to college, get a job and then start our own families. When we are young we feel invincible, in control, full of aspirations. When we do graduate high school we expect to enter a good college, and then when we graduate college we are confident that a decent job awaits us. After securing that job we fall in love believing that that special someone will share the rest of their lives with us and we will live happily ever after. Those are the dreams we grow up believing in as no one teaches us otherwise. So after obtaining that degree and landing that dream job and after we tie the knot with that special someone and start our own families we develop a sense of security. Our positive outlook and young stamina only envisions success and consistency however, slowly and painfully life hits us hard and we learn the hard way that just as there were bright beginnings there are also painful endings. We start facing many challenges and difficulties in life that make us question our very existence and makes us redefine our dreams. What makes the notion of endings so hard is they happen just as we’ve become accustomed to the life we’ve built. We start to realize that in our naive notion of believing that success only leads to success and that a marriage is a union where only death does us part and that our families and friends and our jobs will be there for us forever that nothing in life is ever lasting. In our young naive minds where we felt we were in control, we started taking our partners, our families and our lives for granted never once questioning that they could slip away. We believed that the friends we’ve had since childhood will continue being our friends till adulthood, and that the job we secured for years is financially binding and that the spouse we spent our life with will always be there to support and comfort us. The harsh reality though is that there is no such thing as a lifetime guarantee. That even security doesn’t last and that the greatest regret we form is taking the friends, job or family around us for granted. How much we’ve changed and how much wiser and mature life has made us.
So this months entry is to honor endings. This is an entry to bring to the realization that nothing lasts forever. If we were raised to be prepared that just as things in our lives are beginning they do also end we would never take anything or anyone or any day in our life for granted. With the realization that there is no lifetime guarantee to anything not even health, marriage, jobs or life itself our outlook and approach to life and each other would be very different. We will be better and more understanding partners, we will be more grateful and honest employees and we would be much more patient parents. We will spend that extra hour with our families and we will put down our devices to play another round of hide and seek outdoors with our kids before they grow and head off to start their own beginnings. The little things in life like food on the table and a roof over our heads will become the big things. Our relationships and our communications will rise to another level and we will think twice before going to bed whilst in dispute with a loved one. We will make amends to old friends and we will cherish the new friends and we won’t skip our daily jog around the block. We will master enjoying the present moment cause we will finally realize that that’s the only guarantee we’ve got… the present.
So the next time you receive that job bonus aspire to how you could perform even better the next year to maintain that financial security and when you celebrate that 10th wedding anniversary don’t just go out to dinner, honor each other and think of how to renew your relationship and how to better serve each other in order to maintain a lasting union. When you’re struggling with a friend or a family member that you care about don’t just go to bed upset with them, come up with a resolution; studies have proven that a major indicator for a positive quality of life is the quality of your relationships with others. If we cherish and honor the relationships and achievements we have big and small including our own well-being, the more likely we will be able to face endings with honor rather than with regrets. We will have insured our lives and empowered ourselves by planning ahead in case of an ending. If we make the effort to control and repair the damages done today by vowing to do better and be better tomorrow the more secure our lives would be and the better equipped and the better insured we become mentally and emotionally when facing an ending. Life is extremely fickle and every day someone faces an ending to a job, a friendship, a relationship or life. Honoring endings gives us the insight of how to protect and maintain our personal security from the beginning. This is where self empowerment comes in and where independence, personal stability and self awareness forms. Honoring and preparing ourselves for endings just as we prepare our whole lives for beginnings should be something taught at school. Dealing with grief, dealing with loss, resolving conflicts and realizing downfalls should be made into a curriculum with a section on insurance and resilience. Learning shouldn’t just be about language, maths or science it should also be about life, and a big part of life is dealing with endings. This is something I learned the hard way and I hope to make it easier for my children. I hope we all finally realize how precious yet fickle life is and that contemplating its end seems almost inconceivable when in fact it is the very essence of life itself.
La Vie En Rose 