Valediction

     We hate endings.

     As a people, as individuals, we all hate endings. We mourn a little when the movie is over and we have to come back to the world. At the end of dinner, we reach for the last bite of cake but it's already gone. As children, we hate going to bed. As adults, we loathe waking up. Endings are all around us, and we never get used to them. We never come to grips with the fact that things can leave. Things can go, and they will never come back.

     I've noticed we're especially bad at coping with losing time. Things will come and go. We lose phones, money, friends, but when we lose eras of our lives, that's when it hits us the worst. When we think back to childhood, we get teary eyed. We lament the end of a bus ride where we spoke to a friend about life and death and love, and we wish we could stay in the uncomfortable grey seats just to keep that time in our minds. When the end of a time is so plainly marked, like with graduation, the loss hits us all at once like the death of a loved one. We realize that this time is over. It's at an end, and we can never come back. Linear as we are, we can only move forward in time. We can look in the rear view mirror, but we can never turn around.

     I've been thinking about astronauts a lot lately. Songs about flying and leaving got stuck in my head like butterflies in a screen door, and I haven't been able to get them out. I've been dreaming about the future, and what we're all leaving to do. We're flying in the name of knowledge, and glory, and science. We're dispersing; we're going to far moons and high stars and though we all want to come back some day, we know that we can't. We'll never come back to this time. We'll be flying near the speed of light and we'll feel like we're staying the same and time is passing normally, but then we'll come back to Houston and generations will have passed and our siblings will be old and the walls will be repainted. And it will hit us just how long we've been gone, and how far we've traveled. We'll have gone to Andromeda and back and nothing, nothing will be the same.

     So, now, astronauts, now we say farewell to Houston. We've loved this time we've had with you; we've hated this time we've had with you, but it has been our time, and we always, always, mourn the loss of a time. The water stained ceilings, the risible podium wars, the obscene amounts of chicken for lunch in the past three months, the essays we had to write on our last weekend here, the dead fish in the lawn, the field trips, the flowers and integrals and green felt soccer balls. Noticing as the benches got too small and the days got shorter and people left us. We realized we could touch the ceiling if we jumped and when we jumped we were told to keep our feet on the ground and stop being taller than everyone else. Weirdly enough, in the end, we felt a strange camaraderie. Whatever we thought all throughout this time, as we got ready to part forever, we suddenly felt close. We'd been together all along but had never really noticed. Whatever we say, we'll miss this time. We may not want to return, but we will miss it, because we always mourn the passing of time. We will always mourn endings.

     We may mourn endings, but we celebrate beginnings, and I tell you that we can never have a beginning without an end. Without destruction, we could never have creation. They're inseparable. Destroy a star, a new one forms from the dust. Cut down the trees to build a house. Burn down the house to grow a forest. End time to start the world anew.

     So when we mourn the end of time, let us always remember that time keeps going, never steady but always present. We will keep the memory, but we have to go and we have to start a new time, so we will have something to celebrate. If we were all scared of heights, we would never get to the stars. If we are all scared of the unknown, it will never be known. So, time must end...but time must always begin.

     Let's fly.