The End: When the Choice is Ours

As summer comes to a close, fall beckons with its new beginnings: a new semester, new plans, new possibilities.

Who doesn’t love a fresh start? And why not? Beginnings are padded with fantasy. We get to imagine what might happen. What we might become. What might be possible.

Endings are different.

There are the ones chosen for us: graduation, the finish line, the end of a project, the end of a life.

They can be rough, or they may be welcomed - but they are endings that come from outside of us. They state very clearly: this part is over.

Those are the easier ones.

The hardest endings are the ones we have to choose ourselves.

When nothing is terribly wrong. When no one has made the decision for us. When something we once wanted is no longer what we want.

And then we wrestle with our sense of responsibility, with the fear that we’re quitting, with the belief that we should finish what we start - even if that means it will finish us first. Because ending things that haven’t come to a natural end can feel reckless, immature. Like the cowardly way out.

And yet, sometimes the knowing comes first.

A sense that something has gone on too long. That it isn’t working. That it isn’t working for you.

And then the question becomes: how much room do you have to end things before they are ended for you? To give yourself space to consider walking away. To recognize that something has run its course before you know how you’re going to leave it.

Before you know what will replace it. Before you can explain it in a way that makes perfect sense to anyone else.

Some things we don’t want to end. Some things we can’t imagine ever wanting to end. And sometimes, one day, we realize we do.

That doesn’t tell us what comes next.

Maybe it doesn’t have to.

Yours always, Karen