Chances are, wherever you are in your life, whether you're in high school, college, or older, something has just ended for you. Maybe that thing was a relationship. You realized it wasn't going to work, or that you were going in different directions. Maybe it was a job or a summer internship. Maybe it was somebody you knew, whose life came to an abrupt end -- who can say?

Now, let's suppose you've been sick and are now finally better. Your sickness has ended, and your future is brighter than your past. What about the reverse? You were healthy, and now you're sick. How do you deal with losing your health? What do we do when the good things in our life come to an end?

But maybe for you it's not that something good has ended and something bad has begun. Maybe something that was good in your life was replaced by something else good. For instance, I have just ended a summer internship that I loved to now go back to school for my senior year. I'm surrounded by my friends, I'm learning, and there is endless possibility for my future. However, I find myself dissatisfied, because I so value my experience at my internship that I wish it had not ended.

For many of us, dissatisfaction is the first thing we feel when we have to leave a good thing behind, regardless if in doing so we move on to another good thing. We often wish things could have ended on our terms when we felt we were ready. Maybe we wish we never had to move on -- that we never had to say goodbye to that friend who moved away, or come to a point in our relationships when we realize it's over. However, we don't get a say. Ultimately, when something ends is often beyond our control, and time moves forward whether we're ready for the future or not.

So what do we do, when we are faced with the bittersweet longing of things before? When something that used to be ours is beyond our reach?

To be frank, there's no simple solution. Moving on is difficult, and we rarely welcome change with open arms. All we can do is remember to be thankful for each experience as it comes, even when we're sad to see it go. Instead of being dissatisfied that something ended, we need to be thankful it happened -- even if we wish it could have lasted longer. The fact is, there will be many times in life when we'll have to say goodbye to good things, and if we are only able to focus on the unhappiness we feel when something has ended, we will forever spend our lives looking backward at what we have lost. In doing so, we rob ourselves of the joy we might experience in the future.

At the end of this year, hundreds of thousands of seniors in college will graduate, and thus say goodbye to a chapter of their life. Their underclassmen will wish them well, and thus come closer to their own ending of that chapter. Meanwhile, across America, marriages will fall apart, loved ones will depart, and children will grow up. People everywhere will experience an end to something, and shortly after, a beginning.

Time will run its course. As we go through our lives, we will say goodbye to things we never wanted to do without. I can only hope that we remember to be thankful for those things, even as we mourn their passing. And I pray we do not think so longingly of the past that it destroys our hope for the future. Finally, I hope we never forget that every end, however bitter, is also a new beginning.