Endings Are Not Failures
It’s early evening and my windows are wide open because the weather is ideal and I have a thing about moving air. A breeze swishes the leaves and plays random melodies on the wind chime hanging beneath the eaves - a duet with the evening bird chatter.
It’s so quiet inside that I hear the house noises, which I’m pretty sure is a kindly, or perhaps uninterested, ghost. This quietude is rare for me; I tend to fill up my spaces with sounds: conversations, news, music, my own voice, the guitar or piano. Our home seems a bit big and hollow these days, but used to positively vibrate with activity and all the noise that goes with perpetual motion.
Do I miss it? A little, I suppose. But somehow along the way it became evident that I was no match against the progression of linear time - so best to spend my energy elsewhere. My mom always used to say, “The only constant is change.” Mom said many clever and even profound things, some of which I internalized (I liked her very much). I was well into adulthood when it dawned on me that in this instance she was quoting the Greek philosopher Heraclitus.
He elaborated, “Everything changes and nothing remains still; and you cannot step twice into the same stream”, though I never heard Mom say that.
It’s a comforting image…observing the movement, renewal, changes. And does anyone accuse a stream of failing when it terminates into a lake or the sea? Do we criticize its turns and loops, how narrow or wide, and whether it roars or trickles on its way? No, because it is just doing its river thing: flow and erode and deposit and provide.
Heraclitus viewed the world as constantly in flux, always becoming but never being - hence the stream metaphor, and he was declaring this idea 2500 years ago. “There’s nothing new under the sun”, said Mom…er, actually, King Solomon.
Billie Holiday - Solitude (Audio)
In my solitude just now, I finally picked up the book that is due back to the library in a few days. Discussing various aspects of writing in Bird By Bird, the wondrous author Anne Lamott draws the metaphor that each character is given at birth one ‘emotional acre' to do with whatever they like. Without exception, everyone gets an acre. No rules or guidelines, except: 1) don’t hurt anyone, and 2) you can invite or forbid others to your acre according to your desires. Your acre can be whatever you make it: vegetables in neat rows, a field of wildflowers, a junk yard - whatever. And something else; you can change it at anytime.
Extending this image, let’s say we choose to write our own story: What if your acre is a junk yard filled with cool stuff you’ve collected but you decide you want fresh tomatoes and basil to put on your pasta? You get rid of the cool junk to make room for your new garden and learn a ton about determinate and indeterminate and heirloom tomatoes, and Genovese and Opal and Thai basil. You enjoy the sweet growing things all summer and then, as designed, the garden goes into its resting phase with the cold and snow. YAY! Now you transform your acre into an ice skating rink for months of fun with the people you love. Spring comes and with it, the wildflowers. You get the idea. Your acre never fails; one phase ends so another can begin.
It is tempting, so tempting, to let the voice in our head judge and rank every little thing (HERE is a Well Canto article about that).
Good/Bad, Black/White, Right/Wrong, Success/Failure. This is a mental shortcut - a.k.a cognitive distortion - called All or Nothing, or Polarization. (Read more HERE.)
The problem is that Polarized thinking is based in fear and negativity, and often doesn’t even reflect reality. Perhaps worse, it is the villainous foil to inspiration, motivation, and creativity. We do NOT want that polluting our minds and souls, now do we?
‘Failure’ is a useful word if we are discussing a physical structure like a bridge in need of repair. But I invite us all to stop applying it to ourselves, our goals, our journeys. Because life, it seems to me, is a series of endings and beginnings, and we have the choice to celebrate all of it with a sense of adventure.
Stay curious, my creative friends!
May you live in ease and kindness, with a free heart.
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