An Ode to The End

Here I am again, sitting in front of screens, contemplating if it is even worth it to start writing. I am going through a lot right now in life. I try to appreciate what I have instead of thinking about what I don't. The main problem is, I believe in myself, I trust who I am, but it consistently fails me. I care about everyone, every thing, but the saying is true; nice guys always finish last. The thing about that statement is people don't realize that in this world, 2nd place, 3rd place and so on, those are all last. If you aren't number 1, you're losing. I am losing right now, but I fucking love the game. I love to compete. All of that hinges on one single aspect of life though, the game has to be fair. Every game has it's ways of being unfair. Sometimes a game ends and someone mutters "if we only had one more quarter, we win that game." Another classic, "Those refs wanted us to lose, there is nothing we could have done." Even the worst of the end game conversations "He or she should have passed it instead of shooting, they can't take that foul there." We tend to try to find single instances where things went wrong. I think the one truth that remains the same throughout our history, throughout possibly the whole galaxy, is that it ends. Everything ends.

Yesterday I thought a lot about 'the end'. Is it really ever a happy ending? The word end has a negative connotation to it in my opinion. What is a good ending? Happily ever after? Does that even exist? Can you show me an instance where the end is good? We toss and we turn with the idea that it was a happy ending, but in reality when something ceases to exist I think there is a part of all of us that yearns for it to return. That is what leads us to dedicating a whole post to the end.

When I was in college I wrote a term paper that was titled "The Ode to Beauty" I received a good grade and I was generally proud about what I had produced. I learned a lot from writing that paper. I learned that beauty has always been observed, but rarely understood. We are fascinated by the beauty of things, maybe the fascination comes from not understanding what makes something beautiful. Another thought is that we are fascinated because although we can find beauty all around us, it ends swiftly. A flower blooms and it dies before we can understand it's beauty. A relationship forms and slowly fades away before we recognize the beauty of young love. Our whole world is constantly ending. The end of an era, the end of a reign, the end of life as we know it. It happens everyday, something is born and something dies.

I often like to think about myself as a deity at the end of time, sitting on the edge of space, watching the history of our universe unravel. What a beautiful sight to see something so delicate become and then be gone. Maybe beauty is contingent on the end. As I think about it, there may be nothing in this world, maybe even the universe that can have both, beauty and no ending. A child's life is beautiful, watching them become who they were meant to be. But eventually they are tarnished by the hardships of this life. Some continue to exemplify beauty for long into their life, then life becomes slow and lonely, and eventually it ends. Memories fade away, feelings and emotions are replaced, sometimes they never come back. There is an end to all of this. Wether or not it begins again after that is still to be decided, but I am certain that one day all of the planets and the stars will turn to dust, and eventually that dust will go away. Then what is left? A black screen? Pharos, Kings, Queens, Presidents, Lovers, Children, Musicians they all seem to feel so obsolete when you consider the end. I don't want this to come off as an ode to death, that story is for another day. I truly want to think about the end of things. The end of a long car ride, the end of a book, the end of the summer. What do we feel as we creep towards the end? Is it all just a cycle, repeated from the beginning of time to keep things in balance?

I am reading a science fiction book right now and that is why I opened up the computer and started writing. I will admit, I started this book a year ago, I read about 150 pages and then it sat on the shelf. I do not know why, I love every word I read in the book, I love the plot, I love the story. Something in my body made me walk past the closed pages everyday. Maybe I didn't want it to end? Maybe I know one day I will fold the back cover over the final page and then it will be over. Yes, there are more books, most likely even better books, but at what cost? To go to the store, browse the options, read the back cover and get a glimpse at what we are signing up for. Then we dive in, the first few chapters are tough to get through, establishing key players, identifying the setting, the style, the motifs. It takes work, it takes dedication and it take focus. It also takes resilience. Resilience because we know it ends. We know the same cycle will start again one day and although that seems nice, to know it will be good again, there is a feeling in the gut that says "but I just spent all this time and energy here, can't it last a little bit longer." No, it can''t. If it lasted forever what would it be? Nothing. It would all mean nothing if there was no end. That is why we wake up and get out of bed in the morning, because some part of us that we don't want to give any attention to knows that the end is coming. The beauty is we never know when.

Luckily with a book, you know the end is coming. With a TV show, a movie, honestly even a relationship, you can feel the turning point. The falling action begins and we are just a part of the ride. We begin bracing for impact, often times people even start thinking about the next beginning before the end even arrives.

I want to get back to the book though because I think something truly amazing is happening here. I restarted this book a few weeks ago. I put it down again and I wish I knew why I stopped reading. This week I am not feeling like myself, honestly I do not even think I know who I am anymore. I don't know what I want, what makes me happy, what my desires are, I feel lost. I thought I knew all of those things, I thought I was on the right track, honestly I didn't sense the end was near. The sad part is that I truly believed in who I was, I loved that person, I loved how they cared about others, all living things. I loved how they were truly selfless. I loved how they said what they felt and they had a perfect unison between gut feeling, logic, and rationality. Unfortunately I do not think that person is coming back. That was the end. Now I have to pick up the pieces and start again. I know this will end too, I will feel happy again one day, I will smile and laugh and find beauty in random things like I always do. Today though, I am stuck at the end. So my question becomes, what is more freighting, if the end truly is the end, or if every time we get to and ending, a new beginning starts? Some of you would read that and think I am crazy, "of course it is good to know a new beginning starts" you would say. But is that comforting? To know that every time you step up to the plate it is alright to fail, it is alright to succeed, because either way you will have to step up to the plate again and it could be better it could be worse, no matter what happened last time it is a new beginning. Doesn't it all feel a little bit meaningless then?

The reason I am here today writing the ode to the end is because the book (The Prince of Milk) is speaking to me. The universe is speaking to me. I open up these pages at a random chapter where I left off and by the grace of whatever power there is in this world, the words are speaking directly to me. It feels like the author wrote this for me, they knew I would be here, at this point in my life, opening these pages and seeing this combination of words. After all that is the occupation of the poet. They show the world through the lens that only the poet can describe, like a window to the unknown. The poet makes the edges softer, and tries to show the beauty, the meaning of all of this maddness that surrounds us. I am thankful for the Prince of Milk. The book is science fiction, but I like to think it is more realistic than people will give it credit for. A never ending battle for love. Two men and a woman, caught in a love triangle and sent into the corpia. The corpia is a place, monitored by the gods. The god of mischef, the god of death, the god of improbability, the god of novelty and so on. They all watch and learn and even play, but the corpia does not know. In the corpia, life ends, but not the way we know it. It ends and begins, the same soul moving through all walks of life. A peasant in the streets of ancient rome, a King at the height of his reign, a housewife in the early 1900's. We all live all of these lives, searching for our half mindstate. That is my favorite part of the book so far. The idea around mindstates and half mindstates is that the gods take one mindstate when it becomes ready for the corpia, then they cut they mindstate in half and drop both into the corpia. For the rest of time those mindstates are searching for each other. Deep in the subconscious they feel the connection. The problem is the other half mindstate can be anywhere, any time period, they could be a cat, they could be a young boy, they could be an old woman. They could be at the beginning of human civilization, they could be sailing through the stars at the end of time, or anywhere in between. I just love it, I love the thought, I love the possibility, I think it gives this life a purpose. But I also believe we are never meant to understand the true purpose, I think it would all fall apart if we did, but then again maybe falling apart wouldn't be so bad.

I thought I found my half mindstate in real life. I truly believed it and maybe I wanted it to be true more than it was. The book also talks about the probability of finding your other half. Extremely unlikely that you are placed in the same corner of time and you manage to find each-other. I mean just try to think it is possible, try to imagine every time it ends, it starts again with new rules, in a new place, a new body, only to repeat the cycle. Now try to think about that happening and two mindstates managing to fall into the exact right place. That would be lucky, but it happens, I know it happens.

Everyone I have talked to has told me to take my hardships as a learning experience, take them with you to the next battle, but truthfully, no words that anyone has said has helped me. I feel alone to be honest, I feel like people try to understand me, but they don't. I feel like maybe people aren't used to experiencing someone genuine in this world filled with bullshit. I have a lot of friends, I have a great family, I had an extremely nice relationship, I have success at my job, but it all feels obsolete now. I wish I could start again. This is the end of the person I was. I hate it, I truly do, but I see no other choice, If I had my choice I would be tossed into the corpia again in some random time period, somewhere foreign, and I would do it all again. I would be who I am, I would love, I would laugh, I would think and I would make the world a better place. But for now, I need to embrace the end, I need to study it, try to understand it. I think I already do, I think it is something that we deal with, but we do not observe well. It is beautiful, it is sad, it is big and it is small. It comes in ways we expect and often in ways we never would have thought of, but there is no escaping it. Everything ends, and some would say everything begins again, but I guess we will just have to wait and see.