All Good Things

I'm sure most of you know that downtown Kansas City was the place to be on Tuesday afternoon. So much so that people were actually leaving their cars on the side of the interstate and hoofing it the rest of the way to Union Station. That's the place where the massive Kansas City Royals 2015 World Series parade culminated with a celebration ceremony honoring the players and coaches, while paying tribute to the loyalty of the, oh ... 800,000 or so fans who turned out for the festivities. I didn't attend the parade or the celebration, but I could hear the roar of the crowd through my office window and I was ... ummm ... blessed to be part of the enormous traffic jam that occurred following the event.

A couple of days later, it's difficult to determine if people are just exhausted from all the excitement of Tuesday's madness or if there's a touch of melancholy in the air ... a twinge of sadness because baseball season is over and the thirst for the boys in blue to bring home the crown has finally been quenched. I heard no chants of, "Let's go, Royals!" yesterday or today, and there were no sounds of honking horns or roaring crowds pulsing through my office window to interrupt the quietness of my workday. Rather than the sea of Royals shirts and caps that filled the city on Tuesday, yesterday and today found everyone dressed in their normal business or school attire. My rush hour commutes were back to their normal times, and there were no abandoned cars lining the sides of the interstate. As I drove home last night, I couldn't help but feel a little sad myself, and I'm not even really a baseball fan. The party had ended, the cheering had ceased and the crowds had disappeared. And as I drove home this evening, one phrase kept pounding in my head ... "All good things must come to an end."

If you've been reading along with me for any length of time at all, you won't be surprised that the first thing I did after I fed Ollie and ate some dinner myself was to hop on the Google to see what I could learn about the origin of that phrase. In doing so, I was the one who was surprised ... I never would have guessed that the phrase, or a version of it anyway, dates all the way back to 1374 and is attributed to Chaucer. The more I read about the phrase, the more curious I became ... not about the phrase itself, mind you, but about the reason so many of us accept it as an accurate depiction of the good things in life. And me being me, I became a bit obsessed with that thought and am now unable to remove it from my mind or scour it out of my heart. 

I mean, think about it ... really and truly think about it ... why do we say that? Why do we say that all good things must come to an end? There isn't a centuries-old saying we repeat that says, "Some good things might possibly have to come to an end sometime like a million years from now." Nope, there's not one of those sayings ... but there is one that states emphatically that every single good thing must come to an end. You want to know what I think? Actually, you probably don't, but this is my blog and that means I'm going to tell you anyway ... so there. I think that centuries-old phrase is crap ... yep ... I think it's a big old honking pile of doo-doo. I most certainly don't think all good things must come to an end ... things like the love I have for my children and my granddaughters ... things like friendships that last a lifetime ... things like having a caring and giving heart ... things like the memories I have of my parents or my brother Jerry ... things like compassion ... things like integrity ... things like honor ... things like faith ... things like loyalty ... things like respect ... things like love.

All good things must come to an end? Not true. In fact, I think just the opposite is true ... all good things must not come to an end, friends ... all good things most certainly must not ever come to an end.