It's not over 'till...when, exactly?

What constitutes the end?  The final of all finals?  The moment you know you can turn off the lights and shut the door?  It can be a very difficult thing to identify.  Listen to a Beethoven symphony.  My father likes to say, "He missed several good opportunities to end that piece," as we hear seemingly endless repetitions of cadential chords.  And consider the way Wagner spins his harmonies on and on, always delaying the cadence to some spot just a bit further than you expect it to be (and to be honest, a bit further than some of us want it to be!).

Richard Wagner, the unholy terror of the opera world, composed a magnificent opera cycle called, in the vernacular, The Ring Cycle.  It consists of four operas meant to be performed on successive evenings.  The fourth, Götterdämmerung (Twilight of the Gods) tells of the downfall of the gods and concludes with the Valkyrie Brünnhilde singing for nearly 20 minutes after which she rides her horse into a burning pyre, effectively committing suicide.  The hall she sang in then catches fire and gets flooded by the Rhine, followed by the fiery destruction of the home of the Gods, Valhalla.  Now there's an unmistakable ending!

Historically the singers who have performed the role of Brünnhilde have been large women, dressed in breastplate and winged helmet and carrying a spear.  Their ample size matched the gargantuan stamina demanded by Wagner to sing for hours on end over a 100 piece orchestra full of horns and tubas.  Hence the origin of the phrase, "It's not over 'till the fat lady sings."  When Brünnhilde was done, we could all go home.  Even the very gods were finished.  Click!  There go the lights!

But it is much more difficult to recognize the end in other aspects of our lives.  How do we know when it's time to shut the door on a career, an opportunity, a relationship?  We can consult with others whose opinions we respect, make a list of pros and cons, try to asses if it's a healthy situation, and so on.  Yet at some point we have to determine on our own if the fat lady has sung.  I believe it's all too easy to say yes, let's turn off the lights and be done.

We get hurt.  We get offended.  We want to leave painful events behind us.  This is all very understandable and very human.  It is also sometimes necessary.  However, let me suggest that we owe each other and ourselves one last chance.  One more opportunity to be kind, to forgive, to make amends, to be the bigger person, to spread the light, whatever the situation may require.  It's the right thing to do.  I nearly wrote off a good friendship of several years because I thought it was irredeemably broken.  From my perspective it had gone the way of Valhalla.  I was wrong.  Brünnhilde is still singing!  Maybe she still sings for you, too.

Lillian Nordica as Brünnhilde