I once watched a friend sign divorce papers. Her hands shook as she wrote her name. She looked at me and said, “I feel like my life is ending.” I didn’t know what to say then. But years later, I saw her again. She was different. Lighter somehow. More herself. She told me, “That wasn’t my life ending. It was my real life beginning.” I never forgot those words.

We all face moments when something ends. A job we loved. A friendship that fades. A dream that doesn’t work out. A place we have to leave. In those moments, we feel like we’re dying. And in a way, we are. But not the way we think.

There’s a type of tree that only grows after fire. The seeds stay locked in their cones for years, waiting. They need the heat of flames to open. Without the fire, there would be no new forest. The ending creates the beginning. Nature understood this long before we did.

Scientists who study the brain have discovered something beautiful. When we learn something new, old connections in our brain have to die first. The brain actually breaks down pathways it no longer needs to build better ones. We can’t become smarter without letting go of old ways of thinking. Every time you change your mind about something important, tiny deaths are happening inside your head, making room for new life.

I knew a man who worked at the same company for twenty years. He was good at his job. He had a nice office, a steady paycheck, respect from colleagues. Then one day, the company closed. Just like that. He came home and sat in silence. His wife said he looked like someone had scooped out his insides. For months, he barely spoke. But then something shifted. He started a small business from his garage, something he’d always dreamed about but never had time for. Within two years, he was happier than he’d ever been. He told me, “I needed to lose that job. I would never have left on my own. Sometimes life pushes you off the cliff, and you discover you can fly.”

Think about a caterpillar. It doesn’t just grow wings and fly away. It builds a cocoon and literally dissolves. Its body turns to liquid. Everything it was becomes soup. Only then can it reorganize into something new. The caterpillar has to completely die for the butterfly to live. There’s no gentle transformation. It’s total destruction followed by total recreation.

This happens in history too. When the Roman Empire fell, people thought civilization was ending. The dark ages came. But that collapse made space for something new. Universities were born. New ideas about government emerged. Art and science flourished in ways they never could under the old system. The Renaissance couldn’t have happened if Rome hadn’t fallen first.

My mother once told me about losing her own mother. She said for a year, she felt like she was walking through fog. Everything seemed gray and distant. But slowly, she noticed something. She was becoming more like her mother in good ways. Taking care of neighbors. Telling stories to children. Laughing at small things. “She didn’t leave me,” my mother said. “She just changed address. She moved from outside me to inside me.” The ending became a different kind of beginning.

I think our biggest problem is that we fight endings. We hold on so tight our knuckles turn white. We stay in jobs that drain us because we fear the unknown. We keep friendships alive long after they’ve died because we don’t want to admit it’s over. We remain in places that no longer fit because moving seems too hard. All that holding on keeps us stuck. We can’t reach for something new if our hands are full of something old.

There’s an old story about a monkey trap. Hunters cut a small hole in a coconut, just big enough for a monkey’s empty hand. They put food inside. The monkey reaches in and grabs the food. But now his fist is too big to pull out. All he has to do is let go of the food, and he’s free. But he won’t. He holds on and gets caught. We’re often that monkey. We know we should let go. We know we’re trapped. But we hold on anyway.

Physics teaches us that energy never disappears. It only changes form. Wood burns and becomes heat and light. Water freezes and becomes ice. Ice melts and becomes water again. Nothing is truly destroyed. Everything just transforms. If the universe itself works this way, why do we think our lives are different?

Maybe death itself is just another transformation. Maybe when our bodies stop, our energy goes somewhere else, becomes something else. I don’t know if that’s true. Nobody does. But I find comfort in the possibility. That even the biggest ending might be the biggest beginning.

I’ve learned to look for the seeds in the ashes. When something ends in my life now, I still feel the grief. I still cry. I still feel lost. But somewhere underneath, I wait. I trust that something is preparing to grow. I’ve seen it happen too many times to doubt it anymore.

The sun sets every single day. We don’t mourn it. We know it will rise again. Maybe we need to see our own endings the same way. Not as permanent darkness, but as necessary night before the next dawn. Every ending is just a sunset. And every sunset promises a sunrise.