Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once wrote:
"Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending."
I think I kinda suck at both. It takes me a little while to become comfortable in a new environment: to form the close types of bonds with people and places that make life meaningful. But then once that happens, I become incredibly attached and can't imagine a life before or after.
I think that Longfellow is talking about transitions. So far in my life I've had several major transitions and handfuls of lesser ones: my family moved during the summer between eighth grade and high school, I moved away to Michigan for college, after college I came out to DC for AmeriCorps. Since the conclusion of my AmeriCorps term of service, I've kind of felt like I've been swirling around in the transition from hell.
I'm here.
But the reason I came here has ended.
I'm working at a coffee shop while I'm waiting for my life to pick up it's natural trajectory again.
But like I said: I get attached.
Just this past week, there were two independent occasions in which I had to say 'goodbye' to awesome regulars who were leaving the area due to work changes.
Last night I said goodbye to one of the construction guys you may remember from this post. As we said our goodbyes and gave each other our best wishes for the future, he embarrassingly drew attention to the fact that I was getting a little choked up. But I can't help it when it comes to goodbyes!
During the summer after college and before I moved to DC, I worked as a live-in tutor in Athens for the richest family I'd ever met (they owned a bunch of crazy-nice hotels and some sort of steel-shipping conglomerate). It basically sucked. The 3, 5, and 7 year old girls I essentially worked for were mean, prada-wearing, screaming, spitting, hitting, brats who made me cry like every night. The family had a household staff (of course...) consisting of a groundskeeper, 3 cooks/housekeepers, and a nanny, who'd all come from China to work there about 5 years back. They were the only reason I survived the summer.
Lately, I've been thinking that perhaps God places certain people in our lives for prescribed periods of time because we simply need each other. There were particularly difficult times during that summer where I felt like Haiyan, the girls' nanny, was in fact my nanny. Haiyan spoke Chinese and Greek + a couple English phrases here and there. I speak English. But things like loneliness, hurt, culture-shock, and exhaustion are universal. So is kindness. Haiyan might've noticed one too many brats spit at me for trying to get her to do her homework, and so she'd bring me an ice cream cone. I've never eaten so much ice cream in my life.
I hated Greece. But that was one of the hardest goodbyes I've ever had to say.
Likewise, I can't wait say goodbye to this transition period that I'm in right now. But, I've also grown attached to my coffee shop peeps, and saying goodbye (whenever that finally happens) will suck. I have some of the girls that work at the shop over to my house to share a meal and chit-chat + a little harmless bitching about our 'favorite' customers about once a month. I get choked up when my actual favorite customers move away.
I guess I don't really have anything profound to say about 'the art of ending' because I'm really bad at it myself. The idea that people who were so important to certain periods of your life simply cannot be involved in the same way when those periods are over, doesn't sit well with me and probably never will.
But that's how transitions work. And that's why they suck
But good thing it's an art-form, since I'll probably have a lifetime of big and small transitions with which to master!
"Great is the art of beginning, but greater is the art of ending."
I think I kinda suck at both. It takes me a little while to become comfortable in a new environment: to form the close types of bonds with people and places that make life meaningful. But then once that happens, I become incredibly attached and can't imagine a life before or after.
I think that Longfellow is talking about transitions. So far in my life I've had several major transitions and handfuls of lesser ones: my family moved during the summer between eighth grade and high school, I moved away to Michigan for college, after college I came out to DC for AmeriCorps. Since the conclusion of my AmeriCorps term of service, I've kind of felt like I've been swirling around in the transition from hell.
I'm here.
But the reason I came here has ended.
I'm working at a coffee shop while I'm waiting for my life to pick up it's natural trajectory again.
But like I said: I get attached.
Just this past week, there were two independent occasions in which I had to say 'goodbye' to awesome regulars who were leaving the area due to work changes.
Last night I said goodbye to one of the construction guys you may remember from this post. As we said our goodbyes and gave each other our best wishes for the future, he embarrassingly drew attention to the fact that I was getting a little choked up. But I can't help it when it comes to goodbyes!
During the summer after college and before I moved to DC, I worked as a live-in tutor in Athens for the richest family I'd ever met (they owned a bunch of crazy-nice hotels and some sort of steel-shipping conglomerate). It basically sucked. The 3, 5, and 7 year old girls I essentially worked for were mean, prada-wearing, screaming, spitting, hitting, brats who made me cry like every night. The family had a household staff (of course...) consisting of a groundskeeper, 3 cooks/housekeepers, and a nanny, who'd all come from China to work there about 5 years back. They were the only reason I survived the summer.
Lately, I've been thinking that perhaps God places certain people in our lives for prescribed periods of time because we simply need each other. There were particularly difficult times during that summer where I felt like Haiyan, the girls' nanny, was in fact my nanny. Haiyan spoke Chinese and Greek + a couple English phrases here and there. I speak English. But things like loneliness, hurt, culture-shock, and exhaustion are universal. So is kindness. Haiyan might've noticed one too many brats spit at me for trying to get her to do her homework, and so she'd bring me an ice cream cone. I've never eaten so much ice cream in my life.
I hated Greece. But that was one of the hardest goodbyes I've ever had to say.
Likewise, I can't wait say goodbye to this transition period that I'm in right now. But, I've also grown attached to my coffee shop peeps, and saying goodbye (whenever that finally happens) will suck. I have some of the girls that work at the shop over to my house to share a meal and chit-chat + a little harmless bitching about our 'favorite' customers about once a month. I get choked up when my actual favorite customers move away.
I guess I don't really have anything profound to say about 'the art of ending' because I'm really bad at it myself. The idea that people who were so important to certain periods of your life simply cannot be involved in the same way when those periods are over, doesn't sit well with me and probably never will.
But that's how transitions work. And that's why they suck
But good thing it's an art-form, since I'll probably have a lifetime of big and small transitions with which to master!
