Times Of Swaziland: AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS AS SIMPLE AS IT GETS ================================================================================ By Bongani Simelane on 01/09/2018 17:49:00 Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.’To me, this quote is all about the circle of life and the circular nature of our lives. Things start, things end. The end of one thing leads to the beginning of another. This quote states it from the opposite view point, in which the beginning of a new thing comes from the completion of the prior thing. Spring comes from the end of winter. Sprouts come from the end of seeds. Harvests come from the end of plants. There are many ways to look at things in life, but for the Ancient Greeks and Romans, simple was often considered better. This quote is about as simple as it gets. Time limited While we like to think of ourselves as more sophisticated, this simple way of looking at things still has some usefulness. Especially as a time limited person, I find it hard to start something new until I have finished with something else first. Does that make a little more sense? I’m not talking about what to do with the wood working project after all the sanding is completed. While that may also be finishing, I’m talking more about being done with something. Taking a project all the way to the conclusion. Finished. It’s easy to start a project. Or a relationship. Or a painting. Or a drawing. Or just about anything else. Finishing tends to be quite a bit more difficult. Some of it is all the steps between starting and finishing. But usually, at least for me, it’s the interest, or the waning thereof. When one project ends, there’s a bit of celebration and enthusiasm generated by the successful finishing of it. That tends to lead to a bit of optimism in starting the next project. With time, the glow fades, and the long hard slog begins, as you march towards the completion. Or you give up, which is a different kind of finished. In my youth, I was a starter, not a finisher. I must have had hundreds of projects I started for every project I finished. Only the shortest or most interesting ever were finished. Pinewood Derby car? Dry and boring Finished! Two foot long model of a Viking Longboat? Still not finished. Most of those projects were abandoned. I gave up a lot, finding the planning to be very interesting and the doing a bit dry and boring. I gave up far too often, and far too easily. However, each time a project was finished, whether by completion or by abandonment, it made room to start something else.