A quote from a song I like says "Every new beginning is some other beginning’s end."
Since the song is about "closing time” at the bar, I don't necessarily think that it's meant as some great philosophical treatise on life, however it does raise some interesting questions regarding life in general.
Must every thing end? Life, relationships, stuff, everything? When it's all said and done, does entropy have hold on us all?
Even when two people have been married for and advanced number of years they both know that it cannot last forever. One of them will die before the other in all likelihood. And yet they speak as if it will be forever. When we first get that dog, cat, hampster, or other furry creature, we know that they will eventually cease to exist. When we purchase that new "toy" or appliance that we've been wanting oh so bad, we know that eventually it will wear out and break and/or we will lose interest in it and it will be relegated to the sidelines of the good times of the past. It seems that nothing we build, say or do will last.
I think the bible's book of Ecclesiastes says it all, "The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun."
And so we see that everything ends and returns to that from which it began in the first place.
It's unnerving to say the least when one really ponders the significance of that maxim because no matter how much or how little you accomplish in life; no matter how many or how few relationships you have; no matter what you buy or sell; no matter who you curse and who you bless; no matter what you eat and what you don't; it all, in the end, is for naught.
Those men and women of a 1000 years ago are all dead and gone and their accomplishments the friends and family that loved them, the spouses and lovers that cared deeply for their lives, the illicit relationships and the ones who lived their lives held the utmost standards, have long since disappeared as well and very few of them have lived on in legend and lore to tell us their tale. The remainder of them are silent and we know nothing of them nor about them.
The only contribution we have to their existence is that they gave rise to us here today; but the thing that made them unique in this world is gone.
In the beginning, God may have created the heavens and the earth, but if that's true then in the beginning God created the end.
"