I always love good stories. I love good stories because in good stories, people face daunting challenges and decisions. Part of a good story is recognizing who a character is and what would challenge her or him the most. What is it that would strike at her glaring weaknesses and makes her question who she is as a person? What is it that he would fight with all his strength to overcome, something that would ultimately require him to sacrifice and change? All the while they can never give up. That’s what makes good stories. And that’s why most good stories are about the things that challenge us the most in life – love, heartbreak, change, moving away from home, coming back home, losing a friend, losing your way. Good stories are difficult because they require us to face our fears and hope we are up to the task. In telling the story, we find the characters going through these struggles, stumbling and making mistakes, but trying to make the right decisions all the same. Good stories involve watching people change.
Yet I think what I’ve come to love the most about a good story is a good story ending. In fact, I would go so far as to say a story is only as good as it’s ending. The ending is what everything resolves. It’s where the characters make the decisions you’ve been hoping for all along; the ones they should’ve made when they first encountered challenges in scene 1. And sometimes it takes them until scene 65 to figure it all out. It’s where the characters become everything you hoped they would become all along and the kind of characters you knew they could be.
And stories, if they’re good, can have perfect endings. Not perfect in the sense that they end in some idyllic, dream-like, fantastical ending, completely untethered to reality. But perfect in the sense of completion; perfect in the sense that things resolve as they should. The girl will finally overcome her fears and strike out on her own to do whatever she has been afraid of doing. The boy who has been lonely and struggling for relationships will finally find happiness and companionship. The couple that has been struggling to reconnect will finally find what was once good in their love and everything will change because of it. These are how good stories end.
I’ve been thinking about endings quite a bit recently. I’ve been thinking about story endings because I recently finished watching Friday Night Lights. The show finished after five seasons and I can safely say that no show I have ever watched has ended so perfectly. (I know, I know, hard to believe. Lost is a close second but didn’t wrap up nearly as well and precisely as FNL.) Coach Taylor walks off into the dimming field lights, having changed the lives of an entire football team and having changed his own life as well.
I’ve also been thinking about endings in life. Just last week, a huge slew of close friends finished their MDivs at Wake Forest University. A three year journey that required many to uproot their lives and overcome many obstacles has come to an end. Many long nights of studying, of slogging through books and paper writing and presentations have culminated in a single sheet of paper that may open many new possibilities. Now a chapter has closed and a new one begins.
The same goes for me as well. I have completed my second year and I am now 2/3 of the way finished with my time at Wake Forest. I am two years into a journey that took over four years to begin. And there is just one year left in a small yet very meaningful chapter in my life.
In a year’s time, I may meet many new friends, or create deeper relationships with old ones.
In a year’s time, I may have many meaningful experiences at school, at church, with my friends, with my professors, with my family. I may come closer to God or I may lose my faith entirely and start all over again.
In a year’s time, I may accept my first full-time job, or residency, or begin at a new place in education.
In a year’s time I may discover someone who will be with me for the rest of my life. I may find out that close friends will still be close by.
I may discover that I will be an uncle, or a pet owner, or a home owner. I may move close to home, or close to my brother, or I may move to somewhere entirely new and unfamiliar – close to no one I know.
I may live near the mountains, near the beach, near water, near the city.
In a year’s time, all of this could happen or none of it could happen. But there is one unshakeable and possibility-filled truth – in a year’s time, this journey will end. And because of that, everything will change. The only question to ask is this: Will it end well?
Imagine the possibilities…and for now my soul, and perhaps yours as well, can only wait.
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