CYCLES OF LIFE

I had a friend muse about her mixed feelings regarding her last year of college. Feeling the excitement, satisfaction and happiness of achieving a worthy goal of graduation after many months of dedicated effort....yet feeling sadness underlying, the regret of leaving behind this life she has come to treasure, friends she has come to love, and, probably, nervousness about what lies ahead. 

Of course there are, steps or stages of life that will affect each of us that way, to feel both joy and dread, both excitement and nervousness. 

Everyone goes through this; even in one of the books by Tolkien (The Fellowship of the Ring) where Bilbo is having his big celebratory eleventy-first birthday party where all around him is joy but he knows in his heart that he is leaving his beloved Shire right after the party, and likely never to return. 

Other examples I can mention are parents whose children are going off to college, or into the military, and whom they know will return much changed; couples who have made the decision to have a child, knowing it will forever change their lives; even the excitement combined with fear of the young child on their first day of school or preschool, whole hours away from their parent for the first time in their lives. All of these are normal emotions about normal life cycles, and humans will continue to experience them all throughout their lives.

I might even suggest that we will all come to a point eventually where we feel joy, excitement, fear and regret about that doorway, that threshold at the end of life that awaits us all, eventually. Loved ones we must leave behind as we venture forth alone, abandoning all that is familiar, sight, sound, odors; freed from the weight of gravity. We will lose the steady heartbeat that has comforted us all since before our births...curious, whether we fear the unknown destination or are confident we know what lies at the end of our journey, still we each must venture on alone through that misty veil to whatever lies ahead.

Cycles of life. For all beginnings, there must come an ending...yet each ending is, I believe, just another sort of beginning.

Peter Hollens sings 'Into The West' in a cappella, in multiple vocal tracks.

This particular video is the one that helps me most whenever I am mourning a loved one or when I am facing new challenges, this song, this voice, this scenery and these lyrics come together to help me both accept a loss in a peaceful way and to focus, to become aware yet again of a larger reason, a greater purpose: the patterns and cycles of life and death and life again. 

As it always helps me in times of grief or change, I hope this video will help you, dear reader, as well.