Endings and The Little Things

A lot can happen in just a few short months. You could move to another country, travel the world, share all new experiences, and realize that there is so much more you still have not done. A part of my life is ending and at first I could not understand how it is that we move on from one stage in life to the next. How do we take the step that makes the present something of the past? How do we approach the end? We all ponder that dark ominous cloud. Leaving home for the airport to go to Spain I asked myself, will I be lost forever? A young daughter about to walk down the aisle turns to her father anxiously with tears stewing and asks, will I always be your daughter? When newlyweds are preparing the final days before their first-born comes, each wonders, will we still love each other? And an old widowed man on the cusp of death looks at an old picture of his wife on his farm porch and asks her, will I see you again?

I was lucky enough to travel to Paris, Rome with the Irish Queen (Karen O'Chief),  London, Vienna, and even squeezed in a spontaneous trip to Bratislava, Slovakia. How did that happen? In summation, I have travelled a lot during my abroad experience, I have witnessed a lot, I have done and eaten a lot (both good and regrettable), and I have changed a little. Change, you gotta love it, even though when first encountering it the majority of us are intimidated by it. Change is the perfect theme to encompass this entire experience. I have changed the way I look at life, people, and even slightly myself. I felt that change along the way and I learned to take it in stride. Day by day and little by little, inevitable new ways of thinking overcame me and new people came into my life. I like to think I learned how to nibble on change instead of swallowing the force of it whole. That is how we learn to live in the present, to enjoy the little moments as they come, and to reflect without letting those little moments of change pass us by without even feeling them.

It is the constant dilemma we all face, at all ages, at different stages of our lives. We cannot help but struggle to figure out a way to live in the present. It becomes so bad sometimes that we end up missing whatever it is we did have. Our life can simply become a fragment of the past. Our feet never really touch the ground. We are either so obsessed with how things could have gone differently in the past or we are so obsessed with predicting how are lives will change in the future. Eventually everything becomes something of the past and we were too clouded to enwrap ourselves in those moments while they were happening. Rather, we were too numb to even feel the change while it was happening. Case and point. Our feet never touch the ground. We should strive not to be those unfortunate few who near their final bows before death look back and regret how little they actually lived. That would be the ultimate failure of life itself.

I know I am not the only one who wonders what will happen when something ends. I understand the scared kid I was when I walked up the airport, I empathize with the young bride grabbing her father's arm, I feel that fear those soon-to-be-parents feel as they look at each other, and I ask the same question the old man does every time I lose someone I love. Each one of them--each one of us unquestionably looks at what is to come after the next thing--after the change. What is to come when one chapter ends? Well I think the problem is in one word itself: end. We look at everything that nears its' expiration date as a finite end, a concrete termination stamp, or even the point of no return. That is where we are wrong and it is that word that causes us the most destruction.

Yes, indeed I could look at my abroad experience and say, "Wow, now what is going to happen once this all ends in a couple of days?" But realistically, there does not have to be an end. The choice is ours to make. I look at the closing of my time here in Spain as a beginning to a new challenge back in the United States. A new journey begins as I learn to take what I learned here and approach my life back at home differently. I will make comparisons in the education systems, talk spanish to my old friends, laugh more at the stupid tourist mistakes I made when I eat dinner with my family. I will live in the present. The present never has to end. Rather, it can always be beginning and always be unfolding.

To my anxious self walking up to the airport gate, I would smack him across the face. Tell him to snap out of it. Home will always be there, trust me I have learned that now. However, college won't always be so kill it while you can. There was no ending when I went abroad, only a new beginning in the present. To the young girl grabbing her father's hand, I would first give her a tissue to stop the black tears from running down her face. She is not ending her time as a daughter, she will always be one, especially to her over-protective Dad. Now, she will get to play both a wife and a daughter. There was no ending, only a new beginning in the present. To the young soon-to-be-parents I would squeeze in the middle of them and then put both of their hands on the wife's stomach. They would feel a kick. Not only do they love each other now and always but they love each other so much so that they created a human life to share in that love as well. There was no ending to their love, only a new beginning of love in the present. And to the old man staring at his wife's picture, I would sit next to him, maybe light a cigar for the two of us and look out at the horizon. I would tell him that I do not know if he will ever see his wife again. The end of life is truly the end of the present, but that's only if he believes so. I would hope and encourage him to believe in something beyond this life after death. Maybe in a whisper of the wind him and his wife will be together or they will grow side-by-side as two sunflowers out in their farm's fields. It is the belief that the present never ends that allows us to live in it and to ignore the things beyond our tangible control. If he believes in the everlasting life of the present, then there is no ending in his death either, rather, just a new beginning with his wife in the afterlife.

The little moments I have experienced are endless and the questions about when something ends can be endless too. But, it is whether we choose to believe that everything has to expire with change that will allow us to overcome the fear of it or not. I am starting to understand that now. My abroad experience, my happiness, my life never has an end, as long as I believe that. We are infinite creatures of an infinite present. So, avoid the questions and do not believe in "the ending". Instead, open yourself to change, carry older details of yourself with you and embrace the present--a present full of constant beginnings. Here is to a better tomorrow.

-M