Closing 2004, Closing A Cycle, Moving On

In a few hours time, we are bidding goodbye to 2004. New year's resolutions are again made. Even the ‘creatures of habit’ are resolved to reinvent themselves. Self-reinvention however is constrained by habits, which are the accumulation of practices that have become integral into our human system. The society or environment in which we find ourselves in also poses constraints in this process of self-reinvention.

I do not believe that habits determine actions and predispositions of an individual. I believe that people – in this case, adults – are capable of self-reinvention. People learn how to learn. Habits are in fact the subject and object of self-reinvention. Habits constrain, but not uniquely determine, individual predisposition.

Overcoming old habits, and hence accustoming ourselves to new ones, is not an easy task. This would involve forgetting and realization – forgetting some of the past that are better forgotten which are necessary for us to enjoy life more, and the internalization of a consciousness (a deeper personal realization) to ‘move on’.

Apparently, I have the consciousness about the possibility of self-reinvention. But I still find it difficult to forget some of the regretful past. Perhaps I am not yet conscious at all; I am just cognizant of it. There is therefore a need to elevate this cognition into the level of a consciousness, in which realization is deeply internalized into my system. Likewise, forgetting is too difficult for sentimentalist people like me. Was it Nietzsche who wrote about the sensibility that individuals become sad because they have memory? To a greater extent, I think he is right. Memory, especially bad ones, just makes us sad. (Meanwhile, I’m reminded of one of the lines in Pablo Neruda’s famous poem on love – ‘Love is so short; forgetting is so long’.) But as we forget and leave in the past those finished moments, learning must be permanent and must be integrated in our self-reinvention.

To friends who are having reflections at the moment and who are resolving to reinvent themselves for the coming 2005, it would be fitting to reflect on this beautiful text by Paulo Coelho entitled ‘Closing Cycles’:

One always has to know when a stage comes to an end.

If we insist on staying longer than the necessary time, we lose the happiness and the meaning of the other stages we have to go through. Closing cycles, shutting doors, ending chapters – whatever name we give it, what matters is to leave in the past the moments of life that have finished.

Did you lose your job? Has a loving relationship come to an end? Did you leave your parents’ house? Gone to live abroad? Has a long-lasting friendship ended all of a sudden?

You can spend a long time wondering why this has happened. You can tell yourself you won’t take another step until you find out why certain things that were so important and so solid in your life have turned into dust, just like that.

But such an attitude will be awfully stressing for everyone involved: your parents, your husband or wife, your friends, your children, your sister, everyone will be finishing chapters, turning over new leaves, getting on with life, and they will all feel bad seeing you at a standstill.

None of us can be in the present and the past at the same time, not even when we try to understand the things that happen to us. What has passed will not return: we cannot for ever be children, late adolescents, sons that feel guilt or rancor towards our parents, lovers who day and night relive an affair with someone who has gone away and has not the least intention of coming back.

Things pass, and the best we can do is to let them really go away.

That is why it is so important (however painful it may be!) to destroy souvenirs, move, give lots of things away to orphanages, sell or donate the books you have at home. Everything in this visible world is a manifestation of the invisible world, of what is going on in our hearts – and getting rid of certain memories also means making some room for other memories to take their place.

Let things go. Release them. Detach yourself from them. Nobody plays this life with marked cards, so sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Do not expect anything in return, do not expect your efforts to be appreciated, your genius to be discovered, your love to be understood. Stop turning on your emotional television to watch the same program over and over again, the one that shows how much you suffered from a certain loss: that is only poisoning you, nothing else.

Nothing is more dangerous than not accepting love relationships that are broken off, work that is promised but there is no starting date, decisions that are always put off waiting for the “ideal moment.” Before a new chapter is begun, the old one has to be finished: tell yourself that what has passed will never come back. Remember that there was a time when you could live without that thing or that person – nothing is irreplaceable, a habit is not a need. This may sound so obvious, it may even be difficult, but it is very important.

Closing cycles. Not because of pride, incapacity or arrogance, but simply because that no longer fits your life. Shut the door, change the record, clean the house, shake off the dust.

Stop being who you were, and change into who you are.

And so, I must stop being who I was. I must recover myself from alienation. I must ‘move on’ - so basic in life, yet too easily forgotten; so common, yet too easily neglected. I’m closing 2004, closing a cycle, and moving on.