Striving towards Excellence

-Karthik Gurumurthy

In every beginning is the end; but doesn’t every end also promise a new and better beginning?

When I was 16 years old I declared, “I am already feeling bad that this Gobi Manchurian will soon be over. It upsetted me so much that I cannot get myself to start eating!” Everyone at the table had a hearty laugh and gave me hard time. However, there was undoubtedly a universal truth in what happened.

Indeed, in every beginning is the end. At the start of life, when one is born, the only surety is that life will end one day. The rest is all shrouded in a mystery to be unfolded as life goes on. The fear of ending is experienced in so many, much smaller things as well.

Whenever you sit down to read a good book or watch a movie you’ve been looking forward to, do you not dread that it will end soon? The ending of a good book or movie, if you have genuinely been caught up in the magic, leaves you bereft and empty for a while. I feel like the younger self with Gobi Manchurian each time I have a good book in my hand. I pile up such good reads at my bedside table, looking at them as a promise of many hours of delight that I would rather hoard than end. The same goes for great movies of which I plan to watch but keep putting off, happy to look at the accumulated treasure. 

Our best bet would be to see life as a series of small cycles of beginnings and endings. When one book, movie, experience, job, relationship, or even a Gobi Manchurian ends, another is almost always waiting for us ahead. Meanwhile, the pleasurable experience we just underwent for each cycle leads to further growth and evolution, making us better, stronger individuals and souls. When one assignment ends, one needs to switch anticipation towards looking forward to the next. Some people are smart enough to realise when an ending is near, and instead of waiting for and dreading it, they find the strength within themselves to end a cycle, so that another may begin. Creative destruction leads to fresh, more promising beginnings.

And so, if in the beginning lies the end, it is important to understand that in every end, there lies a better, more promising beginning. The end of childhood is the beginning of a promising adult life;  the end of novelty in a friendship can lead to a new cycle of maturity, the end of one assignment means you move onto another with more value addition.