What are all the daily little beginnings and endings we experience and what does being more aware of them mean for how we approach what really matters?
When you think of endings what comes to mind?
For me the first thought is that they’re never easy. Then I think of movies or books and the literal ending, often the climax of the whole story, of endings as a culmination. Then I think of those endings you didn’t want: holidays, relationships, friendships, specific moments, periods of time in life.
Then of course there are endings we may want: endings to a difficult period, which could be a vast array of things from ill health to a challenging piece of work to a run.
Sometimes the sense of how good this could feel at the end, having done it, is the thing that most motivates us.
So endings can be difficult and heavy and final and also freeing.
A lot has already been said and written and discussed about the importance of endings and finality for things to have meaning. However, what about all of the smaller endings that happen all of the time that we take for granted.
This blog already has 9 sentences, that’s 9 endings (and probably could have more based on a personal tendency for long sentences).
Consider your day yesterday or up to this point. How many endings have there been?
Up to the point of writing this I can notice an end to sleep, to a meeting, to several walks, two meals, two coffees, many sips of water, many words written, emails sent, pages read, hours of wakefulness, breathes taken: inhales and exhales.
It feels really obvious to note that there are innumerable moments ending, all the time, so many, every second that it would probably be impossible to keep count.
Knowing this, that there are endings everywhere all of the time, what, if anything is different?
Perhaps the common statement that ‘I’m not good at endings’ isn’t specific enough. And this feels more important than semantics and being nit-picky.
What is a truer reflection of our relationship to endings?
What endings are harder than others?
What endings do we take for granted?
What would it be like to be more aware of those endings?
How do we even know when something has really ended?
And we’ve not even started to think about what all these endings may say about beginnings…
If we know that unconsciously we’re ending lots of things all of the time, then we’re also beginning lots of things too, otherwise they cannot end.
Revisiting that list of things that have ended up to the point of writing, that list also means that I started sleep, I begun several walks, I made two meals, two coffees, begun several sips of water, started emails, notes, words, and reading.
Another thing that people often talk about is: ‘I’m struggling to start or can’t start.’
Again, (and again this may be obvious), but what is important is the specificity. We actually are so good at starting and ending things we don’t even realise!
Perhaps the question is how conscious are we of what we start and end and how we want to approach both those processes?
What would it take for us to more easily start and end the things that actually feel much harder?
Of course, when it comes to endings they cannot always be controlled (neither can the beginnings they spawn), however we can control how we choose to respond to them.
How we respond to those bigger beginnings and endings perhaps feels so difficult because unlike my list of little beginnings and endings, those big beginnings and endings in life probably add up to our fingers and toes.
So how can we create more beginnings and endings, or the responses to them that we want through our approach to all the daily beginnings and endings?
What would come from being more aware of all the beginnings and endings within each day, or hour?
If we were more aware of beginnings and endings, of both their magnitude to us and our far greater familiarity with them than we may imagine, how would we approach our lives, our work, our relationships?
As this post ends, what could be beginning because of it, and what is really ending?
