Finding Sweetness in Endings

A reflection on time. Why do we enjoy things more when it’s time to leave?

It always gets sweeter as the end draws near.

Like sugar settled at the bottom of a cup of coffee, each sip becomes sweeter the closer we get to the finish. The more we are enjoying it, the more we don’t want it to end.

But what if it only tastes this sweet because it has an ending?

The filmmaker Orson Welles said, “The enemy of art is the absence of limitations.” In other words, great art is born from limitations.

Sweetness in Endings

Maybe there is sweetness in endings. It’s better to have lived an experience with joy for a short time, than none at all. But also perhaps because the only way to refill a cup is to empty it first.

Perhaps we have to reach the bottom of the cup to understand how to fill it again. Of course, not forgetting to enjoy the sips as we go and savor the moments. Knowing it’s going to end gives us all the more reason to enjoy it in the present.

It’s not always sweet. Sometimes the sips are bitter. It’s always fascinating when something begins bitter, only to transform with time. Like meeting someone you don’t particularly like, only to become good friends. Or moving to a new city that frustrates you at first (like my first few weeks living in New York City), but then slowly your love for it grows and you don’t want it to end.

For me the past three summers, my sweet little cup has been Paris. Yet it has always been temporary. It’s strange arriving in a place working so hard to make it feel like home, knowing that you will just have to leave it again. I love this phase, but I also know it’s sad and melancholy having to say goodbye. It means saying bye to friends, to routines, to neighborhood bakers. But gratitude and living in the present helps alleviate some of the sadness.

New Murphy’s Law? Why do we enjoy things more when it’s time to leave?

As I write this, I am down to my last days in Paris for 2025. Last year I had three months and it wasn’t enough time. This year I had one and a half months, yet still feel it was not enough. Plans with friends that we didn’t get to have, restaurants we didn’t get to try, parts of the city left unexplored. But maybe there’s beauty in the unfinished because it means we have reason to be back.

Maybe you’ve experienced this phenomenon too: Just days from leaving, I found a new favorite café, Au Bois Dorée, on my street and befriended the servers, made new friends through an international club, found rhythm with my run crew. All as I’m about to go.

In my family we say, “Es mejor quedar con ganas de volver.” Translating roughly to, “It’s better to feel like you want to return.” It’s better to have lived and enjoyed than to reach a point where it no longer feels special.

Maybe if there was no end in sight, then we wouldn’t stop to appreciate the beauty and enjoy things as much. I always wonder if I lived in Paris permanently, would it still feel this special?

The Fool doesn’t fear cycles of beginnings and ending because even in returning to the same place, the fool meets it with new eyes. (Ft. my new tarot deck from Tarot Beirut… another post on that soon).

Life is the minutes you want, minus one

Perhaps knowing this will all be gone soon is what makes us enjoy it more while we have it. Maybe it’s the limit that makes it special. The kind of truth a fool embraces, trusting the fleetingness as part of the beauty.

Time is like water. It fills and takes shape of any vessel no matter the size and shape. There is never enough of it. Sometimes this causes restless energy and urgent need to experience life as much possible. But at other times it’s a reminder to slow down and savor it all.

Like a good cup of coffee, life tastes best when sipped slowly. Only with time do hidden aromas emerge and grant us the chance to explore mysterious winding roads.

It’s a delicate balance between urgency and stillness. Between motion and pause. We need both, yet time is fickle. Sometimes it moves in slow motion and other times it’s gone in the blink of an eye. But it always ends a second before we’re ready.

It may sound foolish, but it’s a cycle that often brings joy. To trust in the next beginning even if we don’t want to let go of the one we are in.

“Life is the minutes you want, minus one,” said a character in a book I read recently (The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue). And maybe that’s what makes it beautiful: beginnings and endings aren’t separate. They are intertwined.

There will come a time when we don’t get to start again, which is all the more reason to savor the cycle and things in the middle, while time still feels generous.

—Maria