So today 2014 ends. For all of us, at a time particular to us, subjectively, and potentially outside the realm of where a GPS may locate us.

The end of the year is automatic, arbitrary, and absolute. Automatic in that it always happens, arbitrary in that ends of years are bound to calendars, and calendars are arbitrary, even if, in the cases, say, of lunar calendars, they can be associated with physical events. It is absolute in the sense that it occurs, and has no subjective boundaries, years end whether I wish them to or not.

Other types of endings are different, more subjective and open to interpretation and speculation. Objectively, perhaps, books end when we reach the last page, and have read the last word. Subjectively, however, for all of us a book stops when we stop reading it. Movies are similar, but more ambiguous of late. Gone is the day of the credits at the start and the large The End at the end. Many movies continue into the trailer, indeed, we may not even see the name of the film until after the action has ended, and today’s movies trailers can be very long indeed. Here too the movie ends, for us, when we get up and walk out, whether we’ve watched it to the bitter in or have exited in media res.

Endings to life events, short of death, can be even more complex. Relationships move often in and out of being “present”. We fall in and out of love. We marry, we divorce. We stay in the same place, we move. We cast off personae as a snake sheds it skin, we hunker down in the warmth of the familiar and cozy. Our relationships are endlessly satisfying, endlessly hopeless, and inescapable.

We work, but work changes and e- or devolves. Within work itself, endings can be a thing difficult to achieve. Are we not all familiar with the project that is never finished, the vampire task that never dies and yet continues to drain our figurative life’s blood year over year, the co-worker/manager that cannot bring any initiative to a conclusion but keeps “transforming” it so that it morphs anew into the next new Unfinished thing.

Medical events similarly are acute or chronic, but it is more likely that the acute will become chronic that the inverse, and the chronic may have an evolution, and potentially a fatal path. Is the end of pain, possession of hearty T-cells, regained strength in an injured limb health? Cancer survival is benchmarked at five years, but what is the benchmark for ALS, for Parkinson’s, for life itself?

So as this year ends, reflect on the endings that you have experienced this year, and their quality. Also on whether a choice to create an ending would lead to a new — and better? — beginning in the coming year. And for those of you who are eager to end and begin ab ovo remember this: significant changes, whether endings or beginnings, require time, usually a year — ah, yes, there it is again, that absolute time frame — to become ingrained and integrated with the personal self.

Good wishes on necessary endings and good beginnings to all as 2014 ends.