The Beginning Is Near

Someone recently made a video compiling all the times The Atlantic ran a headline beginning with “The End of”: The End of Men. The End of Human Rights. The End of High-School English. On and on.

Of course, we are witnessing the end of important institutions. But apocalypticism is also a great way to manipulate people: it seizes their attention, keeps them reactive, and feeds the capitalist fantasy of disposability — the idea that things simply go “away” because we’ve declared them obsolete.

People often come to my coaching practice because they feel something important has ended: their youth, a relationship, an old sense of how to live. And they’re right. Something is ending. But focusing on what’s ending can also protect us from opening to what’s beginning, which can be scarier. What’s beginning is unknown, unpracticed, and more vulnerable to disappointment.

I’m a fan of Francis Weller’s work on grief, and I do think many of our problems come from failing to mourn loss properly. But the pop-psych world has become too quick to treat every difficult transition as grief. Sometimes what we call grief is actually fear of having to change.

When a partner leaves, we may focus on the loss partly because we don’t want to face who we were already becoming without them. When we lose a job, we may dwell on what was taken from us rather than face the frightening question of what we want now.

Real grief honors what has passed while making room for what might come next. Fear of change, on the other hand, tries to keep the past from passing.

Beginning again requires a certain rebelliousness. At some point you have to seize that right for yourself. No one can cross that threshold for you.

The beginning is so near. But you have to claim it.

As always, if you’d like to be held through your process, reach out and we’ll set up a free coaching call.