Good things too are ALLOWED to end.
And no, that’s not a scary fact; it’s the kindest promise.
Hi friend,
Recently I shared with you the poem that Magical Liz Gilbert guided us to extract from the life-shifting workshop that she and Rob Bell ’s taught at the Omega Institute workshop last month (you can read it here).
One of you invited me to elaborate on this idea that “good things too are allowed to end”.
So, below is my heart’s understanding of it.
It begins and it ends. That’s how a season works. It doesn’t ask or wait for a reason. It doesn’t ask or wait for permission! It doesn’t need to be mad at anyone or unhappy or bored. It doesn’t judge the way it ran its course, deciding to therefore extend its stay or to cut its losses by checking out.
When it’s time for Summer to take over Spring, Summer starts without questioning if it has the legitimacy to take the center stage. When it’s time to give space for Autumn to unfold, Summer goes on a hiatus until the next time it meets the sun. That’s how seasons work.
Simply, humbly, repeatedly, organically. And everyone in Nature adapts, and agrees.
Fruits wait for their time to come while the flowers dance, and the leaves know they’re meant to leave their tree before winter comes. Snow knows that her busy season will be between December and February and that she’ll get to rest later in the year. Animals are fine with this. They don't question it. They don’t decide that they have too much to do to hibernate! or that they’d better take a trip North, for once, when their instinct drives them to migrate to the South. Nature trusts Nature.
Nature trusts itself.
Nature knows–in a way that has nothing to do with rules, laws or concepts. Nature is. That’s it. There’s no decision, planning, doubt or drama. Nature does what Nature does. Simply, humbly, repeatedly, organically.
Not because “this”. Nor because “that”. But “because”. Because seasons are a part of Life. And so seasons are. Flowers blossom when it's their turn to do their part in the perfectly organized chaos and awe-inspiring harmony that Nature embodies. Not before. Not after. Right on time.
We do not live that way. Not anymore. We’ve been disconnecting from seasons in every way through our culture, conditioning and human ways.
We don’t ACCEPT seasons anymore and we cannot trust what we cannot accept. We have decided that winter would be the season to perform, instead of rest. We have no time to admire the wonders of Spring and the rebirth of Nature, because we have to close everything up before the summer break comes to drill our productivity down. We do not bathe in the beauty of Autumn, because we’re busy compensating for what we perceive as the inefficiency of summer and worthless partying. We don’t savor the fruits of life, because it feels more important to worry about the fruits that might not come next year.
We want everything to work perfectly at all times and to remain exactly the same, serving our biased version of success and our addiction to a sense of control which is the most addictive illusion a human being will ever get trapped in.
We’ve been disconnected from seasons, from the cycle of things, from the dance of expansion and contraction… and from how necessary they both are for our health and sanity. We crave control instead of relishing the power of uncertainty. We seek rigidity without welcoming the unfathomable kindness impermanence brings.
We settle for pleasure, too afraid to look for joy and we convince ourselves that achieving is a surrogate for living wholeheartedly. We confuse obsessions with passion and coping mechanisms with life goals. We blame Nature for our restlessness without acknowledging that we’re the ones running away from the restful place Nature provides to any soul that is willing to stand still, for a second, a breath, for a heartbeat.
We are disconnected from the seasonal center of all things and therefore we do not understand what a season means anymore. We fear the very idea of the word “ending” and associate it with distress, disorder, disasters, the ultimate dis-ease. And because we’ve coupled those concepts together we cannot separate them in any way.
Things that hurt must end and if things end, it has to mean they were hurting us, others or the world. It has to!
Otherwise, Why. Would. It. End?
We cannot comprehend how a good thing could end without labeling it as a tragedy, and we cannot accept that someone would end something if they don’t have a dreadful reason to run away from what they have built.
“If it ends, if you’re leaving, if you’re changing your mind, your heart or the role you play in my story, you’d better have a good reason to give to me.” Bully Brain is adamant, it deserves an explanation and the details had better be gruesome and earth-shattering. If you’re not failing at your job, if you don’t hate it, if it doesn’t destroy the planet? You shouldn’t contemplate leaving it. Bully Brain is uncompromising on this.
Moreover, if you hate your current workplace but do not have proof that you would be better off somewhere else? Then you shouldn’t waste anybody’s time talking about leaving it. If your partner is not lying, cheating, mistreating you or disappointing you in any way? You would be making a costly mistake by leaving. That’s not allowed, that’s not okay. Get over it. Someone must have done something wrong to be left–which also means that something must be wrong with them if you’re leaving them. If not, it’s too unpredictable, too scary, too unsafe. If you can leave whenever you want even though you do not believe that I have faulted in any way… or even changed!?! Then, how can I make sure that you will always stay? If your family of origin did not abuse you, how dare you move away? If your parents supported you, why would you choose a different belief system than the one they gave you? If you like doing something, if you’re doing it well, and if for God's sake it is having a positive impact on the world, why would I grant you the freedom to stop doing it?
We have been disconnected from seasons and therefore we do not UNDERSTAND them. And we, human beings, struggle to accept what we don’t understand… Thus it is really hard to trust what we do not understand NOR accept.
And that makes sense. That is actually a healthy way of relating to the world… To not trust what feels unacceptable and un-understandable is a good place to start, as we learn to define what feels trustworthy or not!
However, it can also put us in a trap that is hard to escape, and it does in this case.
Because seasons are actually very safe. And they’re easy to WITNESS. They’re a fact of Nature that would be easy to both accept and understand for anyone who had not been brainwashed by a culture convinced that seasons might apply to everything else, but that they certainly do not apply to us, to our bodies… or to our hearts.
We are seasonal creatures. That’s how we grow. That’s how we were always meant to evolve. And in some ways we all can get behind the idea that there are seasons in life! But we mostly associate them with age… And the transitions have to be either very mild and socially acceptable OR once again rooted in a well of heartache, terror and pain. We just cannot fathom that good things are allowed to end.
But whether we resist this idea with our entire nervous system, or welcome this loving realization into every corner of our consciousness, good things are INDEED allowed to end. And that’s not a scary fact of life… that’s the kindest promise our heart will ever be freed by.
“If we can’t stick with a situation any longer, then it goes over the edge and we make it wrong because we think that’s our only alternative. Something’s right or something’s wrong.” explains Pema Chödron.
Does it resonate? It sure does for me…
I feel like I am only allowed to leave if something or someone is hurting me savagely. That I can only change my mind if what I chose at first is not working. That I can only stop a project if it’s failing and no one wants me to continue. I can only leave, stop, choose again, IF I have to. Not because I want to.
This is one of the most subtle ways through which Bully Brain’s scarcity mindset rules our life.
If I’m “winning”–and I mean winning as defined by our culture of course–, I have to continue; otherwise, I might never win again, and it will be my fault. I will have walked away and therefore deserve to be punished for it.
Those ways of reasoning are so ingrained in us, that we don’t even realize the power they have on us. I can’t leave our relationship if you’re a good person, without becoming, in the eyes of everyone else, a bad person. Why would I do that to you? It apparently does not matter if I want something different than what you want, if I’ve realized that I cannot meet you where you are or that you are not interested to join me where I am… if you’re a good person, I have to stay. It feels like q very important law.
We somehow convinced ourselves that it’s better to stay against our own dreams, in a relationship where we feel like the other person should change to accommodate our needs, than to leave and follow those dreams, than to allow ourselves to change in the name of them, that to allow the ones we once loved to remain exactly who they are, chose to be and are meant to be. We put all our attention on the outside world, begging it to transform into the world we need, instead of moving on and running to those places we know already exist, those perfect places awaiting us, as demonstrated by our dreams.
I had to leave my childhood home in order to survive. I know how it feels to leave what is not working. I know the depth of the hole it carves into your heart and how hard it is to let any kind of love come in afterwards to fill it. I know how it feels to not belong, to not be seen, accepted or even tolerated. I know how it feels to be abused by those you love most, humiliated by those you trust, and to feel the tears you’re not allowed to cry drown you from the inside out, while your body dries up from the outside in, lacking the hydration than only comes from unconditional love and burnt by the rage of those who could neither outrun nor face their trauma and could therefore only pass it on. I know how hard and painful it is to leave when you’re obviously supposed to–or at least forced to!
AND I also know how easy it is, in a more subtle way. Because you don’t have a choice. There’s no other option. People tell you that you’re brave and praise your courage, but you’re driven by the kind of primal instincts that allow humans to carry a car if their child is stuck under it. It is heartbreaking, yes; AND it is obvious. It is gut wrenching, for sure, AND it is survival. It is mind-shattering, AND it is the only path.
I also had to leave what was seen as good, what was working. I left Medicine, the Oncology ward, my country and a lot of functioning relationships. I left what was working very well.
I chose to leave Medicine, after more than a decade of my life spent on the oncology ward. I left a job that is useful, highly rewarding in terms of human connection, socially celebrated, and a job I was very good at. A job I had spent 15 years sacrificing everything for… My health, my youth, my dreams. A job which allowed me to meet the bravest human beings, as they allowed me to witness their strength, beauty and grief while battling cancer. A job that I thought defined me and that shielded me from having to know who I truly am and to show who I really am to the world. A job that had become the center of my life.
I decided to leave a country where I was a citizen, where everyone spoke the same language I had been trained to speak since birth, where there is more social security than nearly anywhere on Earth. I left a country that people all over the world dream of visiting. The country I grew up in and where my closest friends live. A country where I owned a lovely apartment where I felt safe, sheltered, inspired. A country where I knew how everything worked and how I was supposed to act, think and talk.
I also had to exit many relationships with people who had never done anything to me. They didn’t know me, but that wasn’t their fault! They thought they did. They knew the trauma based personality I was surviving by at the time. They knew what they thought were my dreams and mindset. They had met the criteria Bully Brain had set as the entry point into my entourage. I chose to exit relationships with kind hearted, beautiful, interesting, inspiring humans, who did nothing wrong, did not change in any way, and who did not understand why I was leaving. Why I couldn’t fit anymore in the box they had lovingly created for me in their mind. Why it did not make sense to let them try to build me a new one. Or how our relationships had built through trauma bonds and not rooted in the essence of who I am.
I’ve learned that good things are allowed to end.
I thought at first I had to find a reason to hate Medicine, that I had to reject all that my career in Oncology had brought to me, that I had to discard any French aspect of my being, to forget my entire French heritage, to distrust the country that welcomed me on Earth, and to find some reason to resent those I did not feel called to interact with anymore.
I thought only blame could absolve me from the shame I carried, for leaving what was not wrong. For daring to want something different, or something more, when I already had so much and when what I had was not out of order. I hid my guilt under a shield of judgements, hoping that someone would tell me that I had been through enough to be allowed to follow my dreams to New York, to start again, to find my people. Those who see who I really am whether I try to hide it or not, those who feel like home, like soulmates, like water, oxygen or like New York. Hoping that someone would confirm that we do not serve the world by doing what others expect from us, but by being all that we are, beyond anyone’s–including our own–expectations. Hoping that integrity mattered more than validation… which of course is the truest truth I’ve ever encountered.
Good things are allowed to end. That’s what our culture has forgotten.
That’s why we attack, feeling compelled to defend ourselves, even though we’ve done nothing wrong and even though others are not actually angry at us.
They’re angry because deep down they hear the same calling, the same promise, the same sacred permission to follow our heart’s guidance and ignore the fears of the ego… They’re mad because they know that they too are meant for something more or something different, but they don’t see that they are allowed to leave, to go, to change, to blossom… They can’t! because “nothing’s wrong”.
Everybody’s telling them that they’re on the right ladder, so they keep climbing further away from the road they’re meant to walk on.
We have forgotten that good things are allowed to end.
And if good things are not allowed to end, then we can only destroy what’s good–in an attempt to have a reason to run away–or stay. This is the tragedy of our human ways. Those misguided coupling between the thoughts that our mind creates, this duality that keeps us stuck in a black and white world where we lose awareness of the endless shades of gray separating them or of all the vibrant colors surrounding us.
However, good things are, once again, allowed to end. We’re part of Nature and, as such, we’re seasonal creatures. We’re meant to grow, hibernate, change, bloom and honor the awe inspiring beauty and chaos of the creative process.
We’re not meant to stay for someone, we’re meant to pave a road where any co-travelers going the same direction can join us for a few steps, a long hike or a lifetime. We’re meant to build homes that we outgrow and to start building new homes over and over again. We’re meant to learn who we truly are by experimenting every day as an adventure which could open a new door, a new chapter or ground us even more into the story we’re currently writing. We’re meant to fall madly in love, let love transform us and see where love wants us to go next, with whom love wants us to go there. We’re meant to travel the world if the world calls us somewhere else and to nurture the soil our roots have chosen when the world shows us we’ve found our place on Earth. We’re meant to choose again today what we chose yesterday and to do it again every day, OR to make a different choice today. Not because our choice is not a good choice anymore. But only because today our choice is different.
Good things are allowed to end. Summer ends even though we love the freedom that summer brings, and winter ends even though some of us feel like snow is Nature’s greatest gift. The day ends even when it is sweet and exciting, and night ends even when we are safely tucked in the arms of our partner or of Morpheus. The most beautiful relationships can end because one doesn’t feel seen, understood or heard anymore by the way the other witnesses, filters or hears the world, without it meaning that one is abandoning the other or that the other is letting their loved one down. A professional path or creative project can light up our existence for a while and then have to be archived because it doesn’t fit in the new chapter we've suddenly chosen to write. What works can feel fulfilling on one day and irrelevant the next.
Good things are allowed to end.
Good things are meant to end.
The only permanent and certain part of life is change.
Care.check:
What would it change for you if you were to trust that good things are allowed to change? What might you allow yourself to let go of? Where could you free your body from a heavy pound of guilt you thought you would carry till death do you part? What would you stop?
What could you… start?
With kindness, love and light–because I truly believe they’re our most sacred offering to this world.
Always,
leo
P.S.: Did you know about Substack’s lovely new features called Notes? Thanks to them, you can find a loving daily care.check here!