I think one of the most tragic habits we carry as people is to carry expectations of infinity for things.  This is a finite planet.  Things die.  They sometimes get reborn.  There is definitely a cycle, and a season, and this exists on various levels.  But we as people invest ourselves into things believing they are to be permanent.  We loathe change.  That’s because when we experience the ripping apart of what change brings it can sometimes hurt.  And so we learn to hate the change of things.

Examples of infinite beliefs are seen in many areas.  We start a job with a company that we think will be our career and the company goes bankrupt and folds.  Or we get fired.  Or it just isn’t what we thought it would be.  We are disappointed.  We are shell shocked because we felt like this job was our “career” that we were going to retire from (and in some extreme cases people literally lose their retirement).  The finite nature of this hurts, and it creates a shadow in our hearts.  Probably the biggest experience of this comes in romance.  We dwell on those that we had deep connections with who end up being “the one that got away”.  We get bitter over relationships in general that ended.  There is regret and guilt and shame that goes with these changes.  We continue to loathe the change in a state of despair. 

Failure is a cousin to this.  When we throw ourselves into something and it doesn’t work we secretly blame ourselves.  After all, we have all these other “failures” like the lost job, lost love, ect and we use that to prop up our self-loathing.  It is crippling, and our bounce back sucks as an effect of this.  We begin to question the nature of things and we internally retreat.

A lot of this is tied into our security.  We identify with our love, our job, ect as who we are as a human.  When the expiration date comes on certain life events we feel like we are to blame on some level for this transition.  And even if we do play a role by not operating at our best, and even if we do play a role by making mistakes or being less evolved in certain situations, there is still a greater truth and it is this:  that everything on planet Earth has an expiration date no matter what.

One of the greatest virtues in life you can cultivate is the gift of letting go.  It is an art form my friends.  And IMHO this comes with time and age.  I am turning 35 and I am just learning how to do this.  This is called ‘being good at good-byes” though not in a disparaging way.  Not in a way that you beat yourself up.  But in a way that you respect and understand that everything ends. 

If you are able to take these endings with a heart of gratitude then you can stand up for yourself and your journey and this life.  See, as you start to respect for example that prior marriage as only being made to last 7 years and not for your entire life then you no longer hold resentment or pain for its ending but gratitude for what you had in that time frame.  Same thing with that lost career.  Same thing with that lost friend.  Or that lost church or school.

What emerges when you recognize that everything has an expiration date is a respect for life.  Your heart opens more.  You begin to respect each of the puzzle pieces in your life’s story as being a necessary part of a whole.  You begin to stand up for yourself in this emerging puzzle rather than holding guilt, shame and regret for each puzzle piece dropping into your life that you ironically need to complete the journey.  You start to surf the waves of the fluid changing nature of our watery blue planet rather than fighting them and drowning.

The best part of this change is that by embracing change you change.  You allow more.  And as you trust you don’t fight and things that are good and lovely and magical are allowed to come along.  And for the times when they disappear or don’t happen just yet you still are able to move forward in a place of trust that they will come.  For you will understand that everything ultimately ends and that’s okay because you will always carry on and you will look back and be grateful for those painful things for what they are rather than existing in a constant state of hurt over their inevitable end.  You will be able to appreciate each new day for what it gives you in regards to another chance at a new beginning.  You will have found you buried under all that uncertainty and mistrust that carries over into each new day. 

I don’t believe that understanding the concept of expiration date will make painful things less painful.  This isn’t a magic pill solution to the realities of life.  Those dragons will still be sleeping in your soul and if you try and wake them they will still breathe fire.  But what I am saying here is that you can being to carry yourself differently.  You can being to respect the expiration date, finite nature of this experience you are living. In doing so you free yourself to take more risks and be more open.   And in doing so you can give yourself a break and hold steady on staying focused on what those experiences gave you rather than focusing on the act of their ending (failing).  You can be positioned for what’s next.  For what’s next can turn out to be cooler than you ever thought possible.  Turn your gaze upon the stars rather than upon the darkness surrounding them. For we would never understand what light is if we didn’t have darkness for it to pierce through.