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A Fitting Entry for the Last Day of the Year (a re-post from Malakai's Pages)

Today is the last day of 2007. I have finished cooking for Buena Noche, which my husband and son will share with me as they always do for the last four years.
But as I  anticipate the passing of time between the old and new year, I obviously do the expected, checking mails from both work and my personal yahoo and chanced upon this article forwarded to me by a friend from school — so aptly written for this time of year and for people with my disposition — always having a hard time letting go of anything and everything from the past (gollee gee, I still have my old rock concert tickets from college, my hospital tags from both giving birth and having my operation, the day’s newspaper from when my son, Kai was born in 2004, name it, I have it!)
I have difficulty letting go — of hurts, of failures, of disappointments. But I have my reasons of dwelling in the past from time to time — there strewn in the tapestry of pains and bad memories are pretty good ones that has inspired me to get out of bed every single day, welcoming the new morning with open arms and move on in spite of , well, you know. One day, I still have plans of making a quilt for Kai with all his first things from the day he was born — first shirt, first Halloween costume, first pants, whatever fits.
But closing cycles do have a way of making moving forward much much lighter.
Read on and happy new year to all!!!
-Grace-
Closing Cycles
By Paolo Coelho
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 forever 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.

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