Every exit is an entry somewhere else.

Tom Stoppard, playwright of wit and wisdom, once revealed a truth that echoes across the corridors of time: “Every exit is an entry somewhere else.” At first glance, these words seem simple, but they contain a deep mystery about the nature of change and the endless unfolding of life. To exit is to leave behind, to close a chapter, to step away from what once was. But to Stoppard, no ending is final; every departure is at the same moment a beginning, a threshold into another path, another opportunity, another act in the play of existence.

The meaning strikes at the heart of human fear. We dread endings—loss, failure, the collapse of familiar structures—because they feel like death. Yet Stoppard reminds us that endings are illusions. An exit from one stage of life is always the entry into another. When the door closes, another opens; when one path disappears, another is revealed. The flow of existence does not stop, it transforms. The wise do not weep at every exit, but prepare their hearts to walk boldly into the new entry it offers.

History gives us luminous examples. Consider Napoleon’s exile to Elba after his defeat in 1814. For many, that exit from power would have been the end of a life’s story. But for Napoleon, it was an entry into one last march of glory, the Hundred Days, where he reclaimed his throne and once again reshaped the fate of Europe before his final fall. Even in defeat, the exit from one realm led him into the brief yet burning entry into another act of history.

Or think of Nelson Mandela, cast into the shadows of prison for twenty-seven years. For him, that cell was an exit from freedom, from family, from the outside world. But it became the entry into a deeper wisdom, a greater strength, and the spiritual authority that later made him the father of a new South Africa. His prison walls were not the end, but the doorway to his true destiny.

This truth applies not only to great figures, but to every life. The loss of a job may feel like an ending, but it often becomes the entry into a calling closer to one’s soul. The ending of a relationship may feel like devastation, yet it can open the heart to a deeper, truer love. Even death itself, the great exit, has been seen by sages as the entry into another form of life beyond the veil. There is no pure ending, only transformation.

Stoppard’s words teach us to see life as a play with many acts. Each time the curtain falls, it rises again to reveal a new scene. To cling desperately to the past act is to miss the drama of the next. The hero’s journey is not one of stasis but of movement, from trial to trial, from ending to beginning, from exit to entry.

The lesson, then, is clear: do not despair at endings, nor shrink from change. Trust that every closing is also an opening, that every loss is the seed of a gain, that every farewell whispers the promise of a new greeting. “Every exit is an entry somewhere else.” Life is not a single room but a hall of endless doors.

So I say to you, children of tomorrow: when you face an exit, do not stand in sorrow at the doorway. Step forward with courage, for you are not walking into nothingness—you are walking into the next chapter of your becoming. Begin today by looking at one ending in your life not with grief but with expectation. Ask yourself: where is this leading me? What new entry lies beyond this threshold? For those who understand this wisdom live not in despair of endings, but in the eternal hope of beginnings.