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I seem to have entered this world with a strong bent for nostalgia. I don’t ever remember not feeling wooed by longings for the past, even feeling nostalgic about the present because it was heading into the past. 

Perhaps my natural propensity for feeling all the feels so intensely is why I struggled mightily to finish a great book or a great movie or a great series. I am notorious for watching 3/4 of a show and being pretty much done with it. I love the exposition, rising action, conflict, and even a bit of the climax, but I’m not really very interested in resolutions and endings. Endings are connected to those deep, deep feelings of loss that nostalgia seems to bring into the present. 

I’ve avoided finishing many things because I enjoyed the process so much that I really didn’t want to get to the destination. Once it was clear that the process was almost over, I lost most of my interest.

Almost two decades ago, when I graduated with my Masters and my clinical license, which was a beast of a Masters and 4 digits of supervised clinical hours, I chose to take a job assignment across the country rather than having to walk through a graduation ceremony and deal with a party that signified the end of a stage of life.

I was constantly trying to get to the beginnings that ends signify without having to feel and be with the endings.

But the end of something is worth celebrating. It is something worth feeling. It is something worth our welcoming and loving presence.

In fact, I have learned that the end of something needs to be celebrated, commemorated, felt, observed, and experienced to really move fully into the beginning that is here and now.

I had a lot of loose ends to tie up once I began to face my discomfort with endings, with closure, with what amounts to a sense of grief and loss even in times of intense happiness.

It wasn’t until recovering from my brain injuries that I learned and experienced that every “thing” arises with its opposite. It’s commonly referred to as the Law of Opposites. But I had no idea that this existed and, for the first 38 or so years of my life, I operated under the assumption that I could get the “thing” I wanted and avoid its opposite altogether. 

I tried to isolate the enjoyment and happiness of the process from the feelings of sadness and loss that naturally come with finishing the project. 

I tried to move from one stage of life into the other without completing the former. 

So much of the past 8 years has been learning how to be with life as it is as I am.

Not trying to control life. Not trying to escape life. Not trying to bend life to my will. 

But being with life as it is as I am. 

Vibrantly. Presently. Potently.

This includes being with the sadness that closure naturally brings.

Today, our Peace and Well-Being in an Age of Anxiety class at Boise State met for our 2 hour final. 

We spent time last week reflecting on and discussing how we each relate to closure. 

And today’s final was designed to be a time of bringing closure to our experience by honoring the time we have been together and giving a blessing to the new beginnings that are also here. 

We began with some movement, some honoring of our voices, and then I asked each student to select a small rock from my personal collection. Each of these rocks stood out to me at some time when I was in nature and I picked them up, pocketed them, and added them to a jar that sits in my office. They may not be significant to anyone else, but they caught my attention, I chose them, and I carried them with me. Today, I was able to display these rocks across a table and invite this incredibly special group of students to choose the one that caught their attention and carry it with them. 

Rocks in hand, we then engaged in a silent mindfulness meditation, listening to the ebb and flow of the singing bowl before each student presented a 3-4 minute piece of their personal writing from the course. While they spoke, we passed their rock around, held it, and were invited to say a blessing of some kind. 

Something like: May you be healthy, may you be safe, may you be happy, may you live at ease. Or, whatever came to mind and heart. 

At the end of our presentations, we held hands in a circle and said thank you and bless you and goodbye to this experience.

A sense of closure.

Prior to class, as I was bringing each student into my heart during my meditation practice early this morning, I felt waves of gratitude co-arising with waves of sadness. I truly love these individuals and am sad that our time has come to an end. 

The sadness doesn’t mean it shouldn’t come to an end. It’s just sadness. It’s just the opposite arising as opposites do.

And, like all things arising in awareness that are calling for our attention, it just needed me to observe it, feel it, acknowledge it as it is, and accept it as it is. Or, as Rick Hanson says, “Let it Be. Let it Go. Let it In.”

It came and it went.

All day. Even writing this, I feel the ebbs and flows.

Allowing life to be as it is as I am.

It is profoundly centering, grounding, and powerful to be with life as it is as I am.

Profoundly different. 

Nostalgia is replaced by appreciation and gratitude in the present rather than a departure from the here and now into the wishing that then was still now.

Somehow, being with life as it is as we are transforms every moment now and in the future. 

There ceases to be a huge reservoir of sadness and longing trying to get our attention because we already gave it our attention and it can freely flow and come through and be on its way.

When the heart stays open, there are fewer and fewer dams of emotions that have to be built and tended to out of the fear that something in life will breach them and become an unmanageable torrent in which we get washed away.

Truly profound.

I will leave you with words not my own but words that are also familiar and wise and true. The first are the words of one of the students in our class who agreed that I might share part of their presentation from today:

“I have noticed myself building trust within myself since this class. In these short few weeks, I have felt security and a sense of wholeness from within. I've learned to sit across a coffee table with my emotions. Based on my background and trauma I never thought I would even get a glance at these feelings, let alone feel them from within. I knew my past came with the responsibility for me to do extra work and part of me never thought I would get to this point in my life. I have felt the contentment of staying open and I never want to fully close again. I have noticed a huge shift in my perspective because of the newfound feelings that were always inside me. I became very attuned to what no's feel like in my body and where I held my anxiety. I know what pain feels like in my body but now I am continuing to learn what calmness, peace, security, wholeness, love, and liberation feel like inside of me too. Now, for some of the first times, I have felt a full body yes.”

Truly profound. 

These words wonderfully pair with a Mary Oliver poem that I had chosen to read at the end of our class time today:

“A Voice from I Don’t Know Where”

It seems you love this world very much.
	“Yes,” I said. “This beautiful world.”

And you don’t mind the mind, that keeps you
	busy all the time with its dark and bright wonderings?
	“No, I’m quite used to it. Busy, busy,
	all the time.”

And you don’t mind living with those questions,
	I mean the hard ones, that no one can answer?
	“Actually, they’re the most interesting.”

And you have a person in your life whose hand 
	you like to hold?
	“Yes, I do.”

It must surely, then, be very happy down there
	in your heart.
	“Yes,” I said. “It is.” (from _Felicity_ by Mary Oliver)

Yes. It is. 

Yes. Yes. Yes.

Peace