Endings

Beginnings get all the love: births, ribbon-cuttings, wedding ceremonies, first days of school, the start of the new year; those are the events that people celebrate.

Endings, not so much: deaths, de-accessionings, divorces, the shuttering of beloved restaurants; these all tend to be mourned or looked down upon.

But if weren’t for endings, the world could not function.  For one thing, we’d be so clogged up with human beings from time immemorial—our ancestors in animal skins or wearing togas or dressed up in Victorian finery—that there’d be no room to move.  And just try getting a table at your favorite restaurant!  No way.

Of course, it’s sad when someone or something we’ve cared for is no more, but that’s from the perspective of the left-behind, not the leaving.  The person arriving at the end doesn’t care; they’re gone, and the something that’s no more—the restaurant, for instance—is likely relieved it need not struggle on anymore.

Some endings, admittedly, are objectively depressing: the last few days of summer, the few remaining bites of pie, when the crotch of your favorite pair of jeans finally wears through; but even these have an upside: mainly, you don’t have to worry about holding on to them anymore.

An apt metaphor for this is the experience of reading a book that you really enjoy.  You’re thrilled to turn the pages, to see how everything will come out, racing toward the end, but when you get there, the enjoyable experience is no more.  

You want to get to the end, but you don’t want to get there.

I suppose life itself is like this, more or less, perhaps with the difference being that, in many cases, the last few chapters aren’t all that wonderful.

Maybe our lives should read less like novels and more like novellas or short stories.

Or maybe more like a 327 word essay, like this one: no one is really sad when it’s over, right?