Endings and Beginnings
[ theme music rises ]
(Lose the Net by Rasmus Faber Courtesy of Epidemic Music)
Isn’t it amazing that good questions lead us so naturally to good answers, and that beautiful questions lead to even better answers! When we open ourselves to the things we don’t know, we’ve opened the doors to discovery and wonder and greater understanding.
I’m Scott Lennox and you’re listening to The Beautiful Question, a consideration of things that matter every day.
[ brief pause ]
This week, we’ll look at endings and new beginnings, and how finishing one cycle can lead to the start of an entirely new one.
I hope you’ll stay with me. Who knows, we might both learn something.
[ brief pause as music fades ]
This episode of The Beautiful Question represents something of a milestone. It ends my fifth year of producing podcasts and brings me to the beginning of year six and what may yet arise. That has me thinking about so many things, especially when it comes to endings and beginnings, whatever “beginning” could mean from this point.
A little more than five years ago I was in my third year of writing a weekly newsletter I called The Two Minute Embrace. You could read it in two minutes. When friends in New Mexico encouraged me to produce them as podcasts, I was surprised. “I don’t know anything about creating podcasts,” I told them. With a wry smile, one of them looked up from his coffee and said, “Do two or three of them and you will.”
That was two hundred and sixty podcasts ago.
[ brief pause ]
T.S. Eliot’s masterwork, The Four Quartets, includes his poem Little Gidding. In it, he states, “And to make an end is to make a beginning. The end is where we start from.”
I’m increasingly aware of the truth of that. Having reached the end of five years of podcasts, I find thoughts about new beginnings twirling around in my head like the spinning seedpods that slowly fell from the maple trees in front of my grandparent’s house in Providence.
For a few days, I wondered if I’ve said everything I needed to say, quietly asking myself if it’s time to be done with them and focus my energies on other things. Ironically, the day I thought that I started receiving unsolicited emails and text messages telling me how much readers and listeners appreciated the current and past episodes. I didn’t think it was anything out of the ordinary at first, but as the responses continued coming, they far outnumbered what I typically receive in any given week.
So, I took a step back to re-consider.
Of course, I know that any decision to stop or keep going is has to be completely up to me and has to be based on what is most right for me. Yet the encouraging feedback I received isn’t something I can easily overlook and I’m taking them into consideration as I ponder.
Whenever I’m making an important decision, I like to put every option I can think of on the table. This time, the options include stopping production and doing something entirely different with my time and energy. Continuing to produce them as they are. Producing briefer episodes. Delivering them every other week instead of weekly. Creating a totally new format and focus. Walking away for a while and coming back to them later.
I’m also leaving myself open to options I’m not yet consciously aware of.
[ brief pause ]
From where I sit, a five-year cycle has ended and I’m giving myself the freedom to be open to new possibilities and new ways of encouraging people. You may have noticed that I end every podcast (as I’ll end this one) by saying that I want to be a voice of calm and collaboration and balance and encouragement in the world.
Whatever I choose to do next will be based on that vision and the sense of freedom and weightlessness I’m feeling now. And whatever that new beginning may be, I’m eagerly looking forward to it. Stay tuned.
As always, I welcome your ideas.
[ brief pause ]
To encourage your consideration of your own endings and beginnings, I offer this week’s three Beautiful Questions.
[ brief pause ]
Question One: What cycle or cycles are ending for you right now?
Question Two: What thoughts and emotions are you having about that?
Question Three: What do you sense or intuitively know about what is waiting to begin in you or for you?
[ brief pause ]
As always, I invite you to write and tell me where your consideration of these questions takes you. I look forward to hearing from you.
As I say each week,
My Light with Your Light!
[ theme music & sign-off ]
I’m happy we can engage this way as we consider things that matter and what to do about them. If nothing else, I hope you feel inspired to look more deeply at ways of caring for yourself. You deserve that.
You can be further inspired by visiting my friends at Kosmos Journal. That’s K O S M O S Journal. Their mission is to inform, inspire, and engage global transformation in harmony with all life. You can easily find them online at Kosmos Journal dot O R G.
And each week at thebeautifulquestion.com, you can read the illustrated transcript of each podcast as you listen. We’ve also included an archive of all previous podcasts, including guided relaxation audios that can help you practice letting go on a daily basis.
If you find these podcasts useful, I encourage you to share them and tell others about them. That’s a great way of helping me get a voice of calm and collaboration and balance and encouragement out into the world.
[ brief pause ]
I’m Scott Lennox, and this has been The Beautiful Question.
[ brief pause ]
The Beautiful Question is a One Light production, written, produced, and engineered by Scott Lennox at HeartRock Studios in Fort Worth, Texas, as a way of paying forward to life, being fully present, becoming better engaged with things that truly matter in a complex world, and committing to a healthier future for all of us.