Finishing Old Chapters
All of the adventures in our lives can be bound and defined by chapters, with main themes and specific meaning. Characters may come and go between chapters, but each chapter is standalone; varying from University, time spent overseas, to partners and lovers. We write these as chapters because once it is over, and the pages are finalised, you can’t go back to it. At times we try to keep a chapter or two open, whether in desire to be able to add a few pages here or there, or just because we don’t know how to close it off. We refuse to finish some of these chapters because we love them so much, because of the stories within them. The problem then arises in the writing of new chapters; for as much as we might want to start a new chapter, we cannot commit to it without closing the old one off.
We know what the new chapter is going to be about, we’ve picked out the characters in explicit detail, we have even written the introduction. This new chapter is exciting, we know where we want to take it, and some of the adventures we want to write about; but we cannot give ourselves to the story, not truly. For each new page that we write in this fresh chapter, our mind lingers on the chapter that doesn’t have an end, the chapter that sits open in our heart. We fear that closing the chapter makes it meaningless, that starting a new one devalues the words on those pages; it doesn’t. Those words were written with love, happiness, tears and sorrow. Nothing can take away the value in those words, for with them carries the weight they were written with; using ink that never fades.
As I sit down, with the new chapter swirling in my head and heart, I try to think of the last words to enter on these old pages, and I hope the characters in it can forgive me.