Sunset in Virgina

I try to bravely face the end of life-chapters as they come. I'm not always great at it, but I am at least aware that a "grin and bear it" attitude will carry me through it easier than kicking and screaming at each modulation of the change. The end of something can often cause sadness, even fear, to well up within me; and I'm challenged to make a direct choice on how I will move beyond it.

There have been a handful of chapter-ends in my life this year; some that I anticipated with hopeful expectation and some that I only-just survived. I appreciate the opportunity to be challenged, to be forced to accept an end.

However graceful (or not) I chose to live through them, ends come. It's inevitable. An unchanging fact about how change impacts us. Ends are a poignant experience within a complete circle-cycle, because they end with a start: start, middle, end...start again.

That is what I think is the most compelling reason to bear through the particularly difficult ends, the ones that scare me the most or make me cry - it's the knowing that a start will begin. There's often no telling what the start will be (or what part of life it will affect); and it is interesting to note that how we handle the end can impact our new start....for good (hopefully) or for bad (regrettably).

I believe that we have the power to directly influence our lives through attitude and outlook. I, for one, don't really want to prolong any sadness in my life (or fear, for that matter). I accept, stoically, that sadness will come to me through any portion of the circle-cycle; but if it hits me at the end, I have the opportunity to positively affect my up-coming start by how I chose to honor the sadness and/or fear.

All experiences offer a lesson, if we are proactive enough participants in our own lives to learn and grow.

I took this picture on a trip to Virgina, a foreshadow of an end-coming in my life. But I am breath-taken at how lovely this end is and how the beauty of it speaks to my soul. I think of how many sunsets (the end of the day-cycle) speak to me with their loveliness. And that's the kind of reputation I'd like to carry: someone who handles the end of a circle-cycle with so much grace and beauty that others are left awed.