When I ride my bike along the beach, the feeling of "I wanna ride forever" is overwhelming. It exhilarates me so much, it's truly one of the most pleasurable activities in life. Yet I know I cannot ride forever, and at some point, I will have to U-turn the bike and head for home. First, because eventually the Florida coastline would end and bikes don't pedal well through the ocean. Secondly, and for a myriad of other rational reasons, it's frankly not feasible to ride a bike forever. The sun would set to end the day, certainly I'd get pooped from pedaling, and somewhere along 'forever,' my haunches would become chafed and tender from sitting on a bike seat for forever many hours.

All things have a start, everything has an end, and forever doesn't exist - until we reach heaven. Bike rides. Jobs. Projects. Addresses. Childhood. Cruises. School. Life. Trauma. Drama. Broken bones. Letters. Pain. Vacations. Massages. Pregnancy. Relationships. Phone conversations. That bottle of wine. They each begin and end. Even that giant, gooey, yummy doughnut you eyed at the bakery and eventually stuffed guiltily into your mouth, soon will be gone. 

Let's contemplate what would happen if something we enjoyed kept lasting. Wouldn't it become stale sooner than you think? I read a person's facebook post who returned from a cruise this week. She wrote, "I just want to be back on the cruise." If the ship sailed on and on and on and on, don't you think she would tire of the scenario eventually and want to disembark? If we stayed on a perpetual vacation, what would happen? It would transform into everyday life and cease to feel special. That is the beauty of savoring something at the time it's happening. Even if that giant, gooey, yummy doughnut lasted forever, well ... we would soon turn green and puke from eating it.

And in the case of a less desirable or dramatic situation, such as emotional pain, knowing there WILL be an end can help to make it more bearable. We can begin it with the end in mind.

Nothing stays the same. Nothing is forever. Diddly. Zilch. We can fear change, yet change is unavoidable. Fated. We walk toward the next thing, toward our destiny. When we embrace the ebbs and flows of life, we reach a better acceptance that they will happen, that they are inescapable. We cease to expect that something will last forever. We learn to foresee the beginnings and ends. Everything in between is the part to savor.