Endings

All good things must come to an end. ~ English proverb

When I was a child, in middle school perhaps, I remember reading L. Frank Baum's The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. The copy I had was a hard cover, oversized book with illustrations throughout. As I recall, I got in the habit of reading a few pages at night before bed. I really enjoyed the story and came to appreciate the characters in the book. So much so, that as I neared the end, I vividly remember slowing down my progress. Reading this book had become an enjoyable ritual that I didn't want to end. I did finish the book as I recall, and I appreciated the conclusion; but I was sad that my ritual had ended. I didn't have another book in the queue. I might have started out with another book... but if I did, that book didn't capture the essence of the ritual I had come to appreciate and so the ritual died with the one book.

Another ending that has been on my mind a bit as of late is my time at the Mayborn Museum in Waco, TX. I am probably over-romanticizing the experience a great deal, but I remember really enjoying my time at the museum. I got to participate in a variety of tasks during my tenure there. Everything from removing a rotting wheelchair ramp off the cotton gin building that was part of the Western style village just behind the museum, to repairing a tarp that was protecting mammoth bones just outside of town, to installing exhibits in our travelling exhibit gallery. There always seemed to be something new and exciting to work on at the museum.

I had a pretty good working relationship with each of my coworkers. Pictured above are a few of my cohorts from that era of my life, Chris and Clark. Chris, Clark and I... together with our other coworker, Ken used to smoke pipes every so often on the back loading dock of the museum. Chris took it upon himself one day to doctor a picture of us on the loading dock. He used Photoshop to place bowler hats on all of us and then placed the three of us in the middle of what looks to be an 1800's style street in Scotland. Chris went on the be a metal fabricator at another university. Clark went to medical school and became a doctor.

My time at the museum ended when I moved to Washington to be closer to my wife's family. I had a really hard time adjusting to that transition, and I compared each of my subsequent career experiences against my experience at the museum... a practice that did not serve me well in any capacity.

My marriage ended in 2015. Truth be told, the marriage probably ended long before that, but in 2015 the formality of that ending took shape. By the end of that year, I no longer had a wife.

I have a hard time with endings. I seem to hold onto things that have ended long after I can admit to myself that the experience is over. Whether that experience be an enjoyable job, a relationship, a vacation, a good book, a feeling, a season of life... Every experience I encounter fades and gives way to another.

A metaphor arrives in my head when I think about endings in my own life. I imagine myself floating down a river, but I continually grab onto a stationary branch or log... I have this desire to remain still and not move with the current, and each time I do this I cause myself distress. Other people in the river seem to float freely. They don't cling to a particular moment along the ride as I do and their lived experience is made better because of it.

If I have a hard time with endings, I feel it necessary to add that I have an even harder time with beginnings. After my time at the museum my career floundered. Truth be told, I don't feel I have a career at this stage of my life. I have a job. After my marriage I didn't venture out into the dating pool again... not seriously anyways. I believe in the eleven years since my divorce, I've gone on two or three legitimate dates. I suppose I've gotten in the habit of foreseeing the ending before I exert an effort into any beginning and, as such, talk myself out of beginning entirely. A line from the movie Good Will Hunting comes to mind and resonates with me as I write this:

You're always afraid to take the first step, because all you see is every negative thing ten miles down the road. ~ Sean Maguire, Good Will Hunting (1997)

Reflecting on my time as a father, I remember sharing in the first 18 years of my daughter's life. I recall that period of my life being profoundly vibrant and edifying. I have hundreds of very fond memories of loving and being loved by my daughter. She moved away to college... an ending for the both of us... but also a beginning.

I was invited to a game night last night. Among the games we played was The Game of LIFE. When all was said and done, I lost at LIFE. I believe I came in third, but I was somewhat inspired by the player's "life" to my left. Austin's character didn't go to college and randomly ended up with a horse in his teenage years. That horse promptly kicked him in the face and left him disfigured (I believe this might have been a fun ad lib by Austin and me, rather than an actual occurrence prescribed by the game.). His character became a model after that. When modelling didn't pan out, he became a vlogger. I believe he then transitioned to being an author, and then a poet. He never married. He lived out of his car for all of his life as I recall, having never landed on a space that allows you to purchase a house. As the game wound down Austin waxed poetic about the serendipitous "life" he had lived. The horse that quite literally "kick" started his career was now but a jar of glue in the trunk of his car. Of Austin's fictional "life" I remarked, "He got knocked down several times, but damned if he didn't pick himself up and get back on his feet, every time!"

Austin didn't win at LIFE either as I recall (I believe he might have come in forth.), but I was somewhat encouraged by his fictional character that had traversed the fictional years in the span of forty minutes or so. He just went for it, and if something didn't work out for him, he did something different. What would it look like to let go of whatever "branch" or "log" I might be clinging to on the water's edge and surrender myself to the natural flow of that metaphoric river I find myself fighting against? I'm slowly learning to loosen my grip.

Let everything happen to you: Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke