All Good Things Must Come To An End

I'm sure you've heard the old saying "All Good Things Must Come To An End."  I recently heard that a couple of times from friends of mine. That got me wondering: Why did they say that?

Why are we consumed by the loss of wonderful things in our lives?

I've been out of balance the past few weeks and I've been trying to regain my equilibrium. So I'm back to reading my Buddhist books (like "The Power of Now") and it hit me.  The worry of loss is all about the chatter your mind is making. According to all the Buddhist texts it's our mind's ego piece making too much noise forcing us to identify with our Monkey Mind, our internal thinker, our internal critic that tells us all the wrong things that can happen in the future and keeps our minds whirling. It's our mind's way of keeping ourselves afraid to (as James Cameron puts it in his TED talk) "understand the limits of possibility."

So how do we have the courage to stop being afraid of loss, of opportunity, of everything? How can we keep our monkey minds quiet and explore the future without being limited by our own preconceptions? I've heard that courage is going into the unknown in spite of all of your fears.  The fears are there but they don't stop you moving (see John McCain's book "Why Courage Matters"). Courage is risking the known for the unknown, the familiar for the unfamiliar, the comfortable for the uncomfortable.

James Cameron's final statement in his TED talk says "Failure is an option, but Fear is not." We will fail, all good things will end, we will be afraid, but we will also succeed in uncommon ways and experience good things that amaze us in ways we cannot even dream of.

So here's my question: "What does your mind tell you can't happen, will come to an end, will fail? What are you afraid of?" Can you just listen to that noise without being consumed by it? What courageous thing could you do to silence that sound?

See you on the wire

-- Steven Cardinale