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The End.

Every story has one. A place at which the tale comes to a close, (hopefully) wrapping up all the loose ends. The question is: what does it truly mean for something to be over, to have ended? Does anything ever really end? I feel that the common conception of an ending is a place at which the 'story' (whatever it is) is finished, where one can comfortably close the lid of the box and say "there, it's done." But I don't think that's completely accurate, I don't believe we can really, simply, say that. Nothing is ever 'simply' done. I don't believe in absolute endings.

After all, what is an ending but the beginning of something new?

What happens when high-school ends? University begins. When your childhood is over, you become an adult. The end of a novel rarely means the character stops living. No one truly knows what happens when we die, but the end of our lives are the beginnings of others' lives without us. There are no neat boxes for these things. The switch from end to beginning is, in my experience, more often than not instantaneous. One thing does not end before--in order that--the other begins; rather, the ending and beginning are one and the same.

So, we've reached the 'end' of the course. But I see no end; the horizon stretches out before me, bare. What we have reached is the liminal point, the transition period, the train-station. Here I see no dead end, but a train that waits, ready to take us to whatever, or wherever, or whenever we are willing to go. With us we carry our lessons, the individual truths we have found in each preceding story we have lived through, to aid us with the journey ahead. The valuable tools we have gathered here in this story will continue to live on past all of our ‘happily ever afters’ and ‘amens.’ 

The Beginning.