“When was the last time you felt something you didn’t want to end too soon?”
Today honestly. I reached out to a very close friend where the relationship got complicated in an attempt to mend it. Maybe I haven’t learned to accept goodbye as you have but I think it’s premature right now.
“Maybe we don’t need to cling to permanence, to the idea that we have to hold on to every experience forever. Maybe the awareness that it’s all fleeting is what makes it meaningful.”
This is my mental picture of “its never that deep”
all goodbyes are dispersals, but some can be dispersed more than others, what type of goodbyes do you believe are the best?
Thanks for sharing; glad something connected. To take a stab at your question, I’d say best isn’t a metric you can measure goodbyes with. Neither really is it about feeling "good" but about being conscious and honest in letting go. It’s not about how pleasant or cleanly it wraps up—goodbyes don’t optimize for comfort. Closure, in itself, is fiction; we pretends there’s a clean end- there isn’t one.
The best ones—if they can be ranked at all—are those where you look squarely at what was, recognize what wasn't, and let both rest. It’s a human feeling to want these two opposing things—a friendship unchanged and the growth that makes its return impossible. And if, somehow, you did pull that friend back exactly as they were, would the friendship really be the same?
When you say "it’s never that deep," maybe it’s tempting to shrug it off, but isn't depth the point? The fleetingness, the limits—these are what make us engage fully.
You mention it feels premature, and I think I hear in that a deep care, and an expectation that relationships should last if they’re right. That assumption that if a relationship is "right," it should last we could de- and reconstruct. What if relationships change because we change? And that’s not failure; that’s life. What if the sad part isn’t that relationships change but that they can’t keep pace with how much we change?
Accepting endings doesn’t erase what came before; it defines it. Clinging often isn’t cherishing but hiding from the reality that part of what you loved is already gone. Letting go preserves the memory, untainted by the erosion of overstaying. It’s brutal, but honest. Think of a sunset: beautiful precisely because it’s brief. If it lasted forever, would we even notice? So maybe it’s not about whether the goodbye is premature but whether you’re willing to let it be complete. Maybe the fact that you feel this reluctance at all is proof enough that it’s time to move forward. That pull you feel? I’d think of it as a cue to let go, and make space for what’s next.
I came here from your writing about travel and how traveling into the unknown changes you more than staying in the comfortable.
Just before I had read that piece, I was drawing the northern lights in colored pencils, and then I came into my studio, and I had started tracing a photo from when I was 16, wearing converse and that same red butterfly was on my converse shoes! The universe works in mysterious ways
Planting seeds of connections woven into the life and love we live on our journeys here
Beautiful piece!
Some thoughts below,
“When was the last time you felt something you didn’t want to end too soon?”
Today honestly. I reached out to a very close friend where the relationship got complicated in an attempt to mend it. Maybe I haven’t learned to accept goodbye as you have but I think it’s premature right now.
“Maybe we don’t need to cling to permanence, to the idea that we have to hold on to every experience forever. Maybe the awareness that it’s all fleeting is what makes it meaningful.”
This is my mental picture of “its never that deep”
all goodbyes are dispersals, but some can be dispersed more than others, what type of goodbyes do you believe are the best?
Thanks for sharing; glad something connected. To take a stab at your question, I’d say best isn’t a metric you can measure goodbyes with. Neither really is it about feeling "good" but about being conscious and honest in letting go. It’s not about how pleasant or cleanly it wraps up—goodbyes don’t optimize for comfort. Closure, in itself, is fiction; we pretends there’s a clean end- there isn’t one.
The best ones—if they can be ranked at all—are those where you look squarely at what was, recognize what wasn't, and let both rest. It’s a human feeling to want these two opposing things—a friendship unchanged and the growth that makes its return impossible. And if, somehow, you did pull that friend back exactly as they were, would the friendship really be the same?
When you say "it’s never that deep," maybe it’s tempting to shrug it off, but isn't depth the point? The fleetingness, the limits—these are what make us engage fully.
You mention it feels premature, and I think I hear in that a deep care, and an expectation that relationships should last if they’re right. That assumption that if a relationship is "right," it should last we could de- and reconstruct. What if relationships change because we change? And that’s not failure; that’s life. What if the sad part isn’t that relationships change but that they can’t keep pace with how much we change?
Accepting endings doesn’t erase what came before; it defines it. Clinging often isn’t cherishing but hiding from the reality that part of what you loved is already gone. Letting go preserves the memory, untainted by the erosion of overstaying. It’s brutal, but honest. Think of a sunset: beautiful precisely because it’s brief. If it lasted forever, would we even notice? So maybe it’s not about whether the goodbye is premature but whether you’re willing to let it be complete. Maybe the fact that you feel this reluctance at all is proof enough that it’s time to move forward. That pull you feel? I’d think of it as a cue to let go, and make space for what’s next.
At least, that’s my advice.
I came here from your writing about travel and how traveling into the unknown changes you more than staying in the comfortable.
Just before I had read that piece, I was drawing the northern lights in colored pencils, and then I came into my studio, and I had started tracing a photo from when I was 16, wearing converse and that same red butterfly was on my converse shoes! The universe works in mysterious ways
Planting seeds of connections woven into the life and love we live on our journeys here