It hits you at the weirdest times. Maybe you’re finishing a decade-long career where you knew everyone’s coffee order, or perhaps it’s just the final 10 minutes of a vacation where the air smelled exactly right. You feel that pit in your stomach. It’s the realization that all good things come to an end, and honestly, it’s a brutal pill to swallow. We spend our lives building "good things"—relationships, routines, comfort zones—only to have time or circumstance dismantle them.
Change sucks. Most of us fight it with everything we've got. But if things didn't end, they wouldn't have any value. That sounds like a greeting card cliché, but think about it: if every summer lasted 1,000 years, you wouldn't care about the first warm day in May.
The Science of Why We Hate Goodbyes
Our brains are literally wired to crave stability. It’s an evolutionary leftover. Back when we were hunter-gatherers, "consistent" meant "safe." If you found a berry bush that wasn't poisonous, you wanted that bush to stay there forever. When we say all good things come to an end, we aren't just being poetic; we are acknowledging a neurological friction.
Dr. Bruce Perry, a renowned psychiatrist and Senior Fellow of the ChildTrauma Academy, often discusses how predictability creates a sense of calm in the human brain. When a "good thing" ends—a job, a relationship, a phase of life—our brain loses its predictive map. We go into a mild state of alarm. This isn't you being "weak" or "dramatic." It’s your amygdala wondering where the safety went.
Loss of any kind triggers a grief response. You’ve probably heard of the Kübler-Ross model—denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. People think it’s a straight line. It isn't. It’s a messy scribble. You might feel totally fine about your "good thing" ending on Tuesday, then find yourself crying over a specific brand of cereal on Wednesday because it reminds you of what you lost.
Geoffrey Chaucer and the History of a Phrase
The proverb "all good things must come to an end" didn't just appear out of thin air. We usually trace it back to Geoffrey Chaucer in the late 1300s. In his poem Troilus and Criseyde, he wrote, "Everything that has a beginning, has an end."
It’s been a recurring theme in literature for centuries because it’s the only universal human experience. Whether it’s the fall of the Roman Empire or the cancellation of your favorite Netflix show after a cliffhanger, the rhythm is the same.
Why the "End" is Actually a Requirement
Imagine a song that never ends. At first, it’s a banger. You’re dancing. After four hours, you’re annoyed. After four days, it’s literal torture.
The "ending" is the border that gives the "good thing" its shape. In philosophy, this is often linked to the concept of finitude. Martin Heidegger, a pretty heavy-duty German philosopher, argued that our awareness of the end (specifically death, the ultimate end) is what makes our lives meaningful. Because time is a limited resource, how you spent that "good thing" actually mattered.
If your favorite era of your life lasted forever, it would eventually become the "new normal." You’d stop noticing the joy in it. You’d get bored. Entropy is a law of physics for a reason.
Relationships: When the Magic Fades
This is where it hurts the most. When a relationship ends—even a "good" one—it feels like a failure. But sometimes, relationships end because they’ve finished their "assignment" in your life.
Therapists often talk about "Reason, Season, or Lifetime."
- Some people come into your life for a reason (to teach you something or help you through a specific hurdle).
- Some stay for a season (college friends, work buddies).
- Very few are for a lifetime.
When a seasonal relationship ends, we often try to force it to be a lifetime one. That’s like trying to wear your favorite childhood shoes when you’re thirty. It’s going to hurt, and you’re going to look a bit ridiculous. Acknowledging that all good things come to an end allows you to put the shoes in a memory box instead of trying to cram your feet into them.
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The Business of Endings: Why Companies Fail
In the business world, this concept is called the "S-Curve." A company starts, it grows like crazy (the good thing), it plateaus, and then it either reinvents itself or it dies.
Look at Blockbuster. For a while, going to Blockbuster was the "good thing." It was a Friday night ritual. But the era of physical rentals ended. The companies that survive are the ones that accept the end of one "good thing" to start the next. Netflix didn't stay a DVD-by-mail company. They saw the end coming and jumped to streaming.
If you’re a freelancer or an entrepreneur, you have to be okay with the fact that your best-performing product or your favorite client won't be around forever. Market fatigue is real. Consumer habits shift. If you cling too hard to the way things "used to be," you’ll get dragged down when the ship eventually sinks.
Practical Ways to Move On Without Losing Your Mind
So, how do you actually handle it when the light goes out?
First, stop trying to "fix" the ending. Some things aren't broken; they’re just finished. There’s a massive difference. If you treat a finished chapter like a broken one, you’ll waste years trying to glue pages back together that were never meant to be there.
Don't suppress the "suck." Seriously. If you try to "positive vibe" your way out of a significant ending, it’ll just manifest as back pain or weird insomnia later. Acknowledge that this sucks. Use the words. "I am sad that this is over." There. You said it. Now your brain can stop screaming at you to notice the loss.
Audit the "Good." Write down exactly what made that time or thing so good. Was it the sense of community? The challenge? The paycheck? Often, we mourn the vessel instead of the content. If you loved your old job because of the collaboration, you can find collaboration elsewhere. The vessel ended; the content is something you can carry with you.
The 10-10-10 Rule. When you’re spiraling because all good things come to an end, ask yourself:
- How will I feel about this ending in 10 minutes? (Probably terrible).
- How will I feel in 10 months? (A bit better, maybe some nostalgia).
- How will I feel in 10 years? (It’ll be a story you tell, or a footnote in your biography).
The "New Beginning" Fallacy
We love to say "every end is a new beginning."
Kinda.
But sometimes an end is just an end. There’s a gap. A void. A period of time where nothing "new" has started yet and you’re just standing in the hallway of a building where all the doors are locked.
That hallway period is where the growth happens. It’s uncomfortable as hell. It’s boring. It’s lonely. But you can't rush the next "good thing." If you try to force a new beginning before you’ve processed the old end, you’ll just recreate the old thing’s problems in a new setting.
Actionable Steps for Navigating Transition
You can’t stop the clock, but you can change how you react to the chime.
- Create a ritual. Humans need markers. When a project ends, go out for a specific meal. When you move houses, leave a note for the next person. Rituals tell your brain, "The transition is officially happening now."
- Stop doom-scrolling the past. If it's a breakup or a lost job, stop looking at the old photos or the old LinkedIn profiles. You’re trying to keep the "good thing" on life support. Pull the plug.
- Focus on 'Micro-Wins'. When a major pillar of your life ends, your confidence takes a hit. Build it back by doing small, dumb things. Clean a drawer. Walk for 20 minutes. Finish a book.
- Diversify your joy. If your entire identity is wrapped up in one "good thing," you’re in trouble when it ends. This is why "work-life balance" isn't just a corporate buzzword—it’s an insurance policy for your soul.
The reality is that all good things come to an end, but so do the bad ones. The seasons shift, the players change, and the credits eventually roll. Your job isn't to make the movie last forever; it's to make sure you were actually watching it while it was playing.
Take a breath. Look at what ended. Thank it for not being mediocre, because if it didn't hurt to lose, it wasn't that good to begin with. Now, go find the next thing that’s worth eventually losing.
Next Steps for Processing Change:
- Identify the 'Vessel vs. Content': List three specific qualities you loved about the thing that ended. Search for those qualities in your current environment.
- The Clean Break: Remove one physical or digital "tether" to the past thing today—delete an old bookmark, throw away a dead plant, or archive a conversation thread.
- The Gap Year Mentality: Give yourself a "grace period" (even if it's just a weekend) where you aren't allowed to worry about "what's next." Just exist in the space between.