Endings

You watch as darkness slowly slips beyond the horizon. The stars that once graced the vast expanse seemingly vanish. But this is no sudden vanishing. Their disappearance just feels sudden for you are never really certain when the actual point of “vanishing” occurs. They’re there and then, after some indistinguishable amount of time… they’re not. It is an ending that appears to have no clear ending; for who can say when night ends and day begins? Is it when the first rays of dawn unsettle the distant hills? Or is it when those distant hills earn their golden garments? Or, not to be outdone, is it when Helios finally spreads his fiery wings upon an unsuspecting yet entirely expectant world?

But what of those nights that fall away to thick, milky-gray morns. You know, those dawns that never really “dawn on you”. It’s as if you’ve entered some alternate kind of “lighted night” where the world still sleeps and the wild things still roam. This “lighted night” envelops you like the sheet you pull over your head when you know you have to wake up but you are just too comfortable to do so. When does night actually end and day ACTUALLY begin?

The alarm declares proudly that it is time to wake up. Your slumber must come to an end. You produce a series of strange grunts that some obscure animal from the other side of Planet Earth (a creature you will likely never encounter during your wanderings in this life) would interpret as an invitation to mate, and then you proceed to search blindly for your phone to end the outrageous sound you have set to wake you up at precisely 6:00 AM. What an odd way to end your slumber. You set a particularly annoying sound to go off at a time that you know you will likely not be awake just so you can be jolted out of your peaceful rest to press the “snooze” button. Not to mention that you do this with the utmost care to avoid any use of your eyes at any time during this procedure as they MUST remain (with no clear reason as to why) firmly shut.

But, alas, you end your night like this every morning; or, at least on the occasions in which it is imperative that night come to an end. Otherwise, perhaps night need not end. Lazy Saturday mornings aren’t really mornings at all. Night lingers on in the artificial reality of your tightly sealed bedroom. Light need not bid you its fervent salutations.

Endings are rather fluid things. They tend to follow the gravitational pull of beginnings, taking a path of least resistance towards their ever impending… end. Like most respectable people, you probably perceive the dawn as a beginning: the beginning of the day. Dawn is, after all, a very beginish term. Phrases like “the dawn of time”, “the dawn of man”, and “it just dawned on me” all point to a particular moment in which something that “was not” came “to be” (time, man, and idea).

But every beginning must also be and end. Every first marks something else’s last. Many such lasts are worthy of remembrance. God forbid we cling too tightly to what comes next that we forget to be thankful for what came before.

I, therefore, dedicate this blog post as a eulogy to all that ends upon its publishing. The beginning will come in due time, do not worry, all shall come to pass. For now, however, I simply say goodbye.