Closing Cycles (Paolo 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
will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with
life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill. None of us
can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we
try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not
return: we cannot for ever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel
guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an
affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of
coming back. 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.