Nothing Comes To An End, Everything Changes
It was the scientist Antoine Lavoisier who put forward this universal law: “Matter is neither created nor destroyed, only transformed.” However, can we also apply this chemical principle to immaterial things, such as feelings, emotions and thoughts?
This question comes to mind most when we are faced with a difficult situation, such as a loss or divorce.
For example, when a relationship ends and we weren’t ready for it yet. Or when someone we loved dies and we feel the intense need to see them again. Or when something that was valuable to us suddenly disappears from our world…
Can we really say that when something comes to an end, it is forever? Does death or great distance put an end to things forever?
The endings we go through in life
It is well known that anything that has a beginning must automatically have an end. In reality, we already say goodbye for a large part of our lives. We start new chapters and enter new situations, forcing us to bury other chapters and situations in the past.
When we are born we say goodbye to that warm, comforting womb. We say goodbye to the period in our lives when we didn’t have to do anything to satisfy our basic needs. From that point on, we begin a continuous cycle of new beginnings and endings.
When we first go to school, we say goodbye to the life in which we were wonderfully at home with our mother. We say goodbye to our youth in order to grow into our adolescence. We say goodbye to our adolescence in order to grow up. And eventually we begin to prepare to say goodbye to life itself.
We experience a multitude of endings that occur slowly but steadily and mark our lives.
We change schools and say goodbye to the bonds we have developed and the expectations that have been floating around in our heads. We move to a new neighborhood and find that everything changes and a new life begins when the old ends. We start a new job or move to another country or we simply find out that everything has to come to an end on our own.
We are exposed to endings throughout our lives, but we are not even aware of it.
Endings that really touch us are those that bring us face to face with the eternal, the infinite. The endings that make us think about the concept of ‘forever’ and ‘never again’. It can be very shocking and a terrible experience to look straight into ‘nothingness’.
The end without an end
When a loved one in our lives passes away or when someone just disappears from our lives without explanation, we are especially saddened to know that we will never see this person again. It pains us to know that this person will never be in front of us again in the flesh and that the bond we had with him or her will never be the same.
These are things we know and although they are, we continue to feel love for these individuals and continue to feel the need to see them again. This is a drama: the bond is broken, but the feeling it aroused will never fade. Although this person is no longer with us physically, the influence this person had on us can remain with us forever.
We all resist when we have to let go of someone we love. We can’t just forget it. We can’t help but miss the comfort that comes from the routine in which we can see that person every day, the person who made us feel safe and happy and a sense of peace.
Even when our relationship with the person we lost wasn’t the best, knowing that person was there made us feel like there was still order in the universe. But then they leave us and we face a dark abyss that we don’t want to look into.
Everything that begins comes to an end. And at the same time, everything that comes to an end begins again, only on a different level.
We see this in the world of physics and chemistry and also in the world of mankind. None of the profound realities we have lived in will disappear. None of the deep feelings we have felt will be extinguished.
After a loss, absence and emptiness are very complicated feelings to endure. In time, in the space that was once filled with love and then became empty, a blooming garden will emerge with beautiful memories that will be with us forever and will comfort us. We will always miss that person, but in that garden will also grow a deep sense of gratitude that will help us appreciate our lives even more.
Somehow, those who have left us will always be with us. Even when we don’t think about them anymore, the feeling that this loss has awakened in our hearts allows us to be who we are. It helps us to grow and define who we are.
The pain only becomes stretched and untenable when we are unable to accept those endings we have no control over. At the same time, we must also learn to accept those new beginnings that can never or will never be a repetition of the past.
