It's Not the Beginning, It's the Ending

There are usually few things in life as disappointing as a bad ending. When you have identified with a story, or endured its ups and downs for a significant amount of time, the least we can hope for is a satisfying ending. Whether it is a book, a series, a film, an article, or an essay, we can say that the ending is an element of the work with which we build a large part of our assessment of it. We have a habit of treasuring in our memory those final moments when everything is resolved, when the truth comes to light, when good triumphs over evil, when the protagonists reach their goal—the last words of a speech, the end of a war, the death of a person. We could say, therefore, that it is endings, and not beginnings, that make a crucial difference. That is why I believe there must, in general, be a need to learn to properly finish everything we do. It is true that good beginnings hook us, that they are capable of leading us (and sometimes even seducing us) toward the main plot of a story, but no spectator will tolerate a bad ending, however dazzling the beginning and development may have been. I venture to say that, for a writer, crafting a good ending can sometimes be rather stressful, especially when it comes to a work to which they have devoted a considerable amount of time. I confess that I am an addict of good beginnings; they work for me as a kind of omen that lets me hastily anticipate the quality of what is to come. It is highly likely that a good work will have a good beginning, but I must also admit that good beginnings do not guarantee good works. This last reflection leads me to conclude that, in general, society may also be suffering from a very harmful predilection for good beginnings in various aspects of life. It is possible that more than one of us has judged a relationship, a friendship, a job, a business, or a venture based only on the initial experiences, and perhaps this behavior has developed in us as a defense mechanism to spare ourselves disastrous endings. “The show must go on.” I used to appreciate that expression as a message whose aim was to encourage people to finish what they do, without blowing out of proportion the stumbles they may have had; but now I must add that perhaps that phrase is also related to the importance of how we arrive at the end of a story. Perhaps some people will remember a bad beginning, a stumble, a mistake, but what they will always keep in their long-term memory is how you finished. That is why the dancer, despite her fall, gets up and dances again; why the musician, despite having missed a note, plays on—because, beyond the stumble, what will really weigh on you is the ending, and what you failed to do to achieve it. It is in the ending that every story or person has the opportunity to reveal its true worth, essence, and contribution. Sometimes, to spare ourselves bad endings, we do not start anything—or worse still, we do not finish anything—and we become witnesses to books, films, jobs, relationships, and people that come to a bad ending. Anyone can boast of a good beginning, but the world will only remember those who were able to craft an ending that was, at the very least, interesting. © Alejandro Guipe | All Rights Reserved.