I don’t know about you, but I absolutely hate when things end. I remember crying and moping around for a week after a mission trip that I went on in seventh grade was over and I had to go home.
Everyone talks about the “show hole” when a season of your favorite show ends and you have to wait months before the new one starts.
This happens for me with books too. It always takes so long to start a new book because I have a fear that no other book will ever compare.
Books, movies, tv shows, vacations, parties, relationships, life stages.
I hate endings because they’re so definitive. They might not be done forever, another season will come out, you’ll read another book and you’ll go on vacation again, but it doesn’t feel like it in the moment.
Some things are done forever though. Things such as life in high school or college, living with your parents or even a loved one’s life are done. Never to happen again.
You invest so much in things and then when they end, it hurts. A lot. You spent so much time reading that book and investing in the characters, and even if the ending is happy, you never get to see what happens next.
This is the same for life. You invest so much into your high school image, but then when you start college or your career, you start over. You probably won’t spend time with high school people again and you have to start your identity over again.
Another example is life and death. Grief is so hard because the person you’ve spent so much time with, invested in and grew with, is gone, forever. Death is the most definitive thing we deal with and arguably the most difficult.
Although things in our lives end, we don’t until we ultimately die. While we’re still alive, we are the protagonist of our own stories. One thing ending can open up doors for new opportunities. We can’t let the little endings in our lives affect the way we live. We can control what we let bother us, even if we can’t control, sometimes, when things end.
New opportunities are waiting, even if the ending of something has got you down. We have to keep pushing on and make the most out of the beginnings.
