A New Ending

It’s January, and most inspirational blogs are encouraging people to reach for the new. It’s a new year! A new start! Reach for those new goals! Dedicate yourself to those New Year’s Resolutions!

Yeah, yeah, yeah. What they said.

But the most important thing for me right now is not what’s starting. It’s what’s ending.

Sometimes the best thing about a New Year isn’t really that we are starting a new year. It’s that we called it quits with the old. There comes a time when we have to let go of certain things so that we can move forward.

I think the earth and its creator have done us a favor by having our lives dictated by day and night. Every 24 hours a new chance. Every 30 days or so, a new month. A dozen of those, and ta-da! a New Year.

I love new starts. I tend to get all enthusiastic when I start something new. New concept, and my mind starts racing with it. New project, and I immerse myself in planning it.

But then the enthusiasm wanes…and I can’t seem to move forward.  Or maybe, the real problem is that I’m still bogged down by the ones I never finished. And shouldn’t I finish those before I start off in a new direction? 

I don’t know about you, but I really need those section breaks. I need a demarcation that encourages me to take stock, and see if I am indeed moving in the direction I want to go. I need new beginnings, yes. But I need some clear-cut endings. Zip. Close it up. Done.

I really wish that there was a manual of expiration dates out there for me. Or a website where I could look up just how long I should hold on to the resolution I set six years ago and just keep resuscitating every January. When is it okay to give up on a project, a job, a goal, and call it good enough? Or to just let it go?

When I was a kid, our mom used to read stories to us where each chapter was about a certain escapade some kids were having. By the end of each chapter, whatever situation or problem they’d faced at the beginning of the chapter was solved. They’d found the missing item, or fallen off the horse, bike, or sled, and been patched up.

I kind of wish life was like that sometimes. That we could get everything solved and cleaned up after by the end of…whatever. The day, the week, the month, the year. Boom. Done. Finished.

End of Chapter.

Wouldn’t it be nice if things were that clear cut? If we knew exactly when to shut the door and turn off the light?

Then there are the stories where the end of the chapter is not a clear-cut resolution with everything neat and tidy. No. This kind has us busting through the end of the chapter, head down, pressing on, so intent on what’s happening that we don’t even notice the end of the chapter. Swish. Turn the page. Never even realize that we passed the end of something and got swept right up into—more.

There’s a name for those. Cliffhangers. Great for action movies and novels, but really overrated when it comes to real life. Just like being swept along without noticing that you’ve hit the end of one chapter and are into the next, when that happens in your life, you are not really aware how much time is passing. And then suddenly, it’s—"Oops. Look what time it is. Two o’clock in the morning, and I have lots I want to do tomorrow.” You’ve extended today beyond its limits, and now you’re short-changing tomorrow. 

There are valid reasons to change chapters. One good reason is a change of perspective. One chapter is written from Character A’s point of view, the next from Character B’s. While that’s a method used in fiction, in real life, it isn’t so much a change of characters as a change within the character. Those priorities and projects that were true and meaningful a few years ago might not be as important any more.

It’s kind of like the seasons. One bleeds into the next without there being a definite shut-off date. But weeding the garden in December is not as high a priority as it was in June. So we don’t keep adding that chore to the daily to-do list. Even if we never got it done. We just let it go and don’t feel guilty.

Sooner or later, we have to realize that certain things are best left in the past, done or not done, and it’s time to move on to new things.

Interestingly enough, if we don’t create those cut-offs, we tend to grow ever further off course. C.S. Lewis said:

“We all want progress. But progress means getting nearer to the place where you want to be. And if you have taken a wrong turning then to go forward does not get you any nearer. If you are on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road…”

Sometimes it’s not that we took a wrong road, but that we’ve already walked it, and taken the pictures, for long enough. Yes, we could keep going. Yes, there are probably more things to see along that road. But where would we end up? Where we wanted to be? Or just further along that road?

I guess what I’m saying is that not all opportunity comes along as something new. Sometimes the greatest possibility arises from the letting go.  

So what should we be letting go of? I don’t know—maybe all those projects we thought were so vital last year or the year before. The professional goals that no longer fit in the current world situation. The resolutions we thought we should work towards because it seemed like everyone else was, but don’t really fit with our core values.  

Time to let go of those useless miles that will just lead us along the same direction we’ve been going, but won’t really get us where we want to be. We’ll keep the ones that really matter. The ones that mean something. Relationships. Dreams.

Let go of the others. Even if they didn’t take us as far as we thought they would.

Full stop. Done.

And we won’t feel guilty about it. Just call it the end of the chapter.

What are you letting go of? What direction are you heading? Where do you want to go this year? Want to share? Tell us in the comment box, below.