C'est la vie!

Ecclesiastes 3:1-13

There’s an opportune time to do things, a right time for everything on the earth:

A right time for birth and another for death,
A right time to plant and another to reap,
A right time to kill and another to heal,
A right time to destroy and another to construct,
A right time to cry and another to laugh,
A right time to lament and another to cheer,
A right time to make love and another to abstain,
A right time to embrace and another to part,
A right time to search and another to count your losses,
A right time to hold on and another to let go,
A right time to rip out and another to mend,
A right time to shut up and another to speak up,
A right time to love and another to hate,
A right time to wage war and another to make peace.

But in the end, does it really make a difference what anyone does? I’ve had a good look at what God has given us to do—busywork, mostly. True, God made everything beautiful in itself and in its time—but he’s left us in the dark, so we can never know what God is up to, whether he’s coming or going. I’ve decided that there’s nothing better to do than go ahead and have a good time and get the most we can out of life. That’s it—eat, drink, and make the most of your job. It’s God’s gift.

Food for thought!

Nature demonstrates that almost everything occurs in cycles. The earth rotates on a daily cycle. The moon evolves around the earth on a monthly cycle, and the earth revolves around the sun in an annual cycle. During the year, the four seasons take us from cold to warm and again to cold as plants and animals cycle from a dormant to an active stage and then, as another winter approaches, again become dormant. Tides flow daily toward, and away from, the shore. Each day closes with a sunset, which is followed by a sunrise. Winter ends; spring begins. And so it goes. Every beginning has an ending, and all endings herald a new beginning: life out of death.

Mohandas K. Gandhi said: “Birth and death are not two different states, but they are different aspects of the same state.” Kofi Awoonor, the Ghanaian writer, stated, “In our beginnings lies our journey’s end.” Our lives also have seasons and cycles. Each of us experiences an endless flow of beginnings and endings. Every season of our life has a beginning and an ending that leads to a new beginning. Childhood ends and adolescence begins; adolescence ends and adulthood begins; young adulthood ends and middle age begins; middle age ends and old age begins. We generally like beginnings—we celebrate the new. On the other hand, many people resist endings and attempt to delay them. This is unfortunate.

Often we don’t feel the joy of an ending, perhaps because we forget that in each ending are the seeds of beginning. Today's First Reading reminds us that beginnings and endings are just normal. The more we allow ourselves to trust that every ending is a new beginning, the less likely we are to resist letting go of old ideas and attitudes and ways of doing things. The less resistance we have, the less pain we experience in making the journey through the many cycles of our lives. 

For a moment, imagine you are a caterpillar. You have this strange urge to spin a cocoon around your body—certain death! How difficult it must be to let go of the only life you have ever known, a life of crawling on the earth in search of food. Yet, if you are willing to trust, as caterpillars seem able to do, the end of your life as an earthbound worm may be the beginning of your life as a beautiful winged creature of the sky.

We can see each ending as a tragedy and lament and resist it, or we can see each ending as a new beginning and a new birth into greater opportunities. What the caterpillar sees as the tragedy of death, the butterfly sees as the miracle of birth. C'est la vie!