Endings and Forever

When you live in Forever, endings are different.

I have always dwelled in the Land of Forever, and I am not sure how I got here. I realize this is a place where space and time exist as a single dimension and the sole sensory apparatus is awareness. Many times I have written about this place without realizing it.

Many times I have been tempted to write a book about the Land of Forever, but I have seen others attempt it, and I know how difficult a task this can be. Judy Blume did it. Not my cup of tea. Jude Deveraux not only wrote a book, but a whole Forever series, perhaps replicating the subject as never ending. Many writers have taken it on. Mostly women. Several men. My favorite is Pete Hamill who takes us through history with a singular figure who lives forever. But my version is about the Land of Forever, which exists as a state of consciousness. Most of the time I am present without even realizing that I am occupying a different reality than the person next to me or the friends around me. Occasionally I will come upon some who also dwell in Forever, but are not aware they are in a special place.

Endings are different in Forever because they are simply landmarks along the way. Forever stretches out endlessly in all directions. Not only can you go back and leap ahead, you can take side trips and diversions that open up new possibilities of discovery.

So as I post on this last day of August, I am deeply aware of the Endings that seem to be crashing down on me, collapsing around me like shards of icebergs that have wandered into the warm oceans and disintegrate. Today is a summing up. A goodbye. A farewell to all that. Tomorrow I may take up paths that seem to be from the past, but they will be new. They will be the beginnings of something else and not a pattern from the past. Even friends will not be their old selves, but new beings, new sensibilities that appear to be vested in old trappings, but are in fact newly generated as though they had shed every cell and replaced their molecules with a new identity.

I realize that although this year has ended, it is fully a new beginning. My actual new beginning starts September 5, my cycle of renewal. I am on the verge of new discoveries and new journeys. I reflect over the past year that took me through terrain I have not seen before, and now I know that the new friends and colleagues enriched my life way beyond my deepest and wildest dreams. And I wanted this to go on forever... forever... and forever...

But forever is cyclical. Renewal is an essential element. Dying is also essential. Ideas wither even though nourished, and friends exit as freely as they entered. They are on to their fresh starts and new beginnings as they wave goodbye. I try to grab their hands, to detain them, but they vanish so quickly.

In this cusp of endings and beginnings I discover an unexpected ending. The surprise rips through me like a sharp gust of wind opening a wound of emptiness... an unanticipated absence now lost. This was something that I hoped would never end, a part of the consciousness of Forever. But now I realize how fragile such connections are...more gossamer than steel... more in flux than grounded... transient and in the moment – until the moment vanishes.

But I wish my friends well. I know in the Land of Forever, they always populate my life, no matter what appearances may declare. Maybe I'll catch them next time round.

So goodbye to all that was so vital and compelling through this past year. Whatever continues does so as the natural projection of ongoingness. Whatever ends, makes way for emergent realities. I am lucky to dwell in this Land of Forever. It does make relationships interesting, and I realize that I search for wholeness that is the promise of Forever. Wholeness is an Infinite state of existence very difficult to sustain as a mortal in a transient world. I was in a time of renaissance, and such periods are often bursts of new ideas that sometimes are extinguished prematurely. In such surges, we harbor the illusion of wholeness and invincibility. For a moment, we touch immortality.

I am always baffled when something beautiful comes to an end. I believe that such beauty should continue forever. And it does. This eloquent contradiction is an equation that is more powerful than E=MC². This is a profound sad/happy moment in my meandering journey. I shut my eyes and listen to everything around me in the Land of Forever, and I know you are waiting there as you always have been. Waiting for me to open my eyes and listen to the new music.