"The world is round and the place that may seem like the end, may also be the beginning." That's a quote by Ivy Baker Priest. Ivy has two claims to fame. First she was treasurer of the United States during the Eisenhower administration ('53 - '61). Her second claim to fame is that she was the mother of Pat Priest, the actress who played Marilyn Munster on the TV show The Munster's during the 1960's. Not to digress too much, but I loved that show! The family car was likely the coolest car to ever grace a TV show. Below is a picture of the car and Pat Priest. To get back to Ivy, she had some other good quotes too. She seemed to be a very intelligent woman. Here are some of her other quotes: "We women don't care too much about getting our pictures on money as long as we can get our hands on it.""We seldom stop to think how many people's lives are entwined with our own. It is a form of selfishness to imagine that every individual can operate on his own or can pull out of the general stream and not be missed." “I'm often wrong, but never in doubt.” One last thought on Ivy... I would have loved to be in the room when she went home and announced that she was marrying a Priest! Okay, I'm sure the parents likely knew who she was dating, but if they didn't and she played it with a straight face that would have been hilarious! Well, now that you likely know more about Ivy Baker Priest than you ever wanted to know, let's go back to her thoughtful quote. I think we have all been to that place deep inside us when we felt we had reached the end. Whether that end was for a relationship, a career or even just another stage of your life, it didn't matter. The feeling of hopelessness was there and if you are now reading this, then you survived... and found a new beginning. And THAT is the beauty of Ivy's quote. The simple truth of it.
New beginnings are all around us. They only disappear when you die. Three times in my life I have felt a sense of hopelessness. Each time, my rational mind told me that life will go on and things will get better... and they did. But each time my emotions did what they could to make it tough on me. The last time this happened was with my wife's illness, and her eventual death. A lot was going on in my life then. My wife was ill and living away from home. I was raising two children on my own, (one just a baby) and my business was slowly failing. I was running through my retirement money at a prodigious rate and it looked like nothing was going to get better. Near the end of it, my wife died. I always believed that things couldn't get any worse, and yet, they did. My wife's death was the high-water mark on the craziness. Slowly, a new beginning began and I am only in the early innings of a new game. Things slowly began to get better. I was able to sell my second house in New Jersey, my Mom moved up to New Hampshire to help me with the girls, and I took a good paying job that allowed me to work from home. While none of these things were in my long-term plan, the opportunities presented themselves and my logical mind allowed me to see the possibilities, no matter how poorly I was doing emotionally. The world is round and our lives are cyclical. Anywhere we may be can be a new beginning, if we are open to it. Just don't give up. There is a lot of beauty in the world. You just need to be open to seeing it. Live your life. Look for opportunities. Think about them logically, and don't be afraid to grasp that new beginning if and when it does appear. In the end, no one can say where their next new beginning will start, or where anything will truly end. Live your life, look for opportunity, and have the courage to start at a new beginning.
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