I’ve been wrestling with a thought, sparked by a quote I saw while scrolling twitter and it goes somewhat like this : "even great successes come to a natural end... the pain of an ending isn't worth the good things."
We’ve all been there. That quiet, hollow space after something wonderful is over. It’s the feeling you get when you finish the last episode of a show you’ve loved for years. Or when you walk out of the office on your last day at a job that meant something to you or the slow, painful fade of a once-vibrant friendship.
In these moments, a heavy question often echoes in our hearts: Was the pain of the ending worth the fleeting beauty of the experience?
This got me thinking about sunsets. My friends and I often go to the beach since it is an hour's drive. We'd sit there and watch the sunset. We take pictures, we sit in silence and it strikes me now that no one ever gets mad at a sunset for ending. We don't feel cheated when the colors start to fade. We just watch, and we appreciate it. We know the whole point is that it's temporary and cannot last and that’s exactly what makes us stop what we're doing and pay attention.
Maybe that's it. Maybe the good things in life are more like sunsets than… I don’t know, monuments. They’re not meant to be permanent fixtures. They’re meant to be experienced.
I think we get it backwards. We’re taught to build a life that lasts, to hold onto things, to seek stability. There's nothing wrong with that, but we don't spend much time learning the other, equally important skill: letting go.
To love a person, a moment, or an experience is to accept the completeness, its beginning, its middle, and its end. The joy of a deep connection does not disappear when that person is no longer in our lives, it transforms. It becomes a part of our own story, a warmth we can carry within us. The laughter from that perfect day trip doesn’t vanish; it echoes in our memories, ready to be revisited.
Realizing that something beautiful won't last forever is maybe the one thing that pushes us to truly be present for it. It makes you love a little deeper, laugh a little louder, and appreciate and grateful every single second you have. It makes you put down your phone and just watch the sunset.
Image Credits
The Thankful Poor by Henry Ossawa Tanner - The Athenaeum: Home - info - pic, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=42118461
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