Closing Circles – Paulo Coelho

“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? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents’ house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended 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 husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister.

Everyone is finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.

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.

Freedom and Discipline

“Freedom is not the absence of commitments, but the ability to choose – and commit myself to – who and what is best for me.” – Paulo Coelho

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No one is free from commitments, despite what they think.

I have met many people over the years who are ‘afraid of commitment’ or seek to live a life without commitments.  However, this is a fundamentally dishonest and immature way of thinking, and usually reflective of a lack of self awareness.

We all have commitments in our lives, whether or not we wish to acknowledge them:  

  • Commitments to our work, to show up on time and do our best. Even if we are just working for ourselves. 
  • Commitments to where we live, from paying landlords and banks to keeping the space habitable.
  • Commitments to our friends and family, to be there and care for them in time of need, to offer advice, to celebrate, to show up on time, etc.
  • Most importantly, We ALL make promises to ourselves, to eat better, sleep more, read more, go to the gym regularly, and so on

Everyone has some distribution of commitments in the categories above, though they might look different from person to person.

Even things that seem like non-commitments are in fact the opposite. To choose not to have children, to choose not to buy a house or to get married. We are simply committing ourselves to a different, ‘non-traditional’ style of life, but it is a commitment nonetheless.

So when someone approaches me and says they aren’t ready for commitment, or that they want to live free of commitments, what they actually should be saying is ‘I dont want this commitment’. 

Unhappiness in Commitment

So why do so many people end up unhappy in their commitments? 

  • We enter into commitments prematurely, lacking all the information.
  • We enter into commitments without understanding fully what is expected of us on our end .
  • We fail to negotiate terms we are comfortable with
  • We stay longer than we should, either because we are afraid or we don’t know how to leave (’feeling trapped’) or don’t realize we could (’promises of forever’)

By this way, many of us end up disempowered, frustrated, and wary of future commitments, not realizing it is our fault we are unhappy, and not the commitment itself. 

Freedom

When we start to realize that our whole life is essentially a collection of different commitments we are making to ourselves and others, and when we wake up and see exactly where those commitments already exist, we gain the ability to negotiate the terms of those commitments.

This is how we become an active participant in our lives. By acknowledging commitments, negotiating their terms, and choosing which ones you will honor and which ones you will let go: this is freedom.

Daily Reminder

Identify the commitments in your life, and the ones you are avoiding. Walk away from the toxic, embrace those that nourish, and add new ones that add value to your life.

-Caitlin Pontrella