Goodbyes are Easy, Endings Hurt

I’m not certain I’ve ever experienced a happy ending. My first and best fishing partner would be my grandfather. From him I learned more than a hook set, but how to say goodbye, my mournful child face buried in his seersucker, when leaving that Minnesota lake assured “it will be here next year.” And it was. By my twenty-first year I turned away from my grandfather’s grave, behind the log church, knowing this was not a goodbye but an ending. What I learned, with time, is new beginnings are often served to us as painful endings. Endings are where new understandings, call it wisdom, emerge.

My biggest trout ever, easily three inches longer than actual, I had in hand no better than a second only for it to snap off and leap free.

Indelibly etched in my retinas, now some 20 years later I could take you to that very spot of that riffle where on the last day of the season I watched that caudal peduncle slip from my hand and swim to freedom.

An ending or a goodbye? For me a painful ending, for Mr. Kype certainly a goodbye with, if a trout had one, middle finger extended. Next time I would greet him with a net, and I did. I’ll call that wisdom, Mr. Kype.

So, on the first of February my tenure as Council chair comes to an end. I question, is it an ending, a beginning or goodbye? Having attended the School of Endings for the better part of my adult life I know this is a beginning.

Recent research at the Mayo Clinic is supporting the long-held assumption that volunteering is good for your health, mental and physical. “Volunteering reduces stress and increases positive, relaxed feelings by releasing dopamine.” How about that? Dopamine. It kind of has an illicit ring to it. I knew there was something going on inside me that maybe I shouldn’t share with the world, but now I can be proud of it.

And it could be a great volunteer recruitment tool. “Hey, partner, need a shot of dopamine? Come to the next workday. It’s cheaper than beer.

At our annual Awards Banquet you will a chance to honor and meet ten volunteers who know the value of beginnings. They all know how to start, keep moving and don’t think about endings; it’s the journey rather than the destination. Let’s call it the dopamine high from volunteering. Some of this years awardees are teenagers and others as old as the hills. I have a hunch those in the “hills region” have benefitted from years of selfless volunteering, just look for that smile and dopamine spring in their step at the Awards Banquet.

For me there will be no swan song or reflections. I will begin as National Leadership Council representative, following on the heels of Linn Beck. That should keep me happy and kicking until the next lap, but don’t look for a sprint to the end.