I should have taken the hint. A lover sent me Ellen Goodman's column about graceful exits six months into our 18-month relationship. But I was unable to read, accept and understand it at the time (I was 24, and science says the human mind is not fully formed until age 27).
As we all watch a particularly graceless exit, it seems a good time to consider Ellen's nut graf:
"There's a trick to the graceful exit, I suspect. It begins with the vision to recognize when a job, a life stage, a relationship is over, and to let go. It means leaving what’s over without denying its validity or its past importance in our lives. It involves a sense of the future, a belief that every exit line is an entry, that we are moving on, rather than out."
A year later, I thought my life ended when the affair did. I was wrong; my life began immediately after. But I've tried to remember Ellen's advice ever since, so that when CMP unceremoniously dumped me after 20 years, I knew it was an entry to my next phase: a lovely decade teaching 8th grade US History.
In both cases, I had to be pushed out, but by the grace of God, I accepted that fact that it was time to leave, rather than fighting to hang on past the natural end. The only constant is change.
Speaking of graceful exits, or the lack thereof, elections.
Posted by: Joe Kashi | November 29, 2020 at 10:05 PM