“People have forgotten how to tell a story. Stories don’t have a middle or an end any more. They usually have a beginning that never stops beginning.” –Steven Spielberg

I love the above quote by Spielberg, a guy who has told a few stories.

I think his criticism could apply to the lives we lead as well.

I know I’m guilty of indulging in a “beginning that never stops beginning”, at least so far as my acting career goes. I feel sometimes I’m sitting in a plane on a runway that just goes on and on…

True, one has to always be willing to start again, to create from scratch, to move forward. Doesn’t that also infer that one needed to end something? How long can you plant new trees in an old growth forest?

Not that one should regularly “burn it all down.” Let’s not follow the Roseanne example.

If one sets goals, one should be willing to attain them, actually and finally.

One of the things I didn’t enjoy about the TV series LOST is that, like life, it just went on and on with no end in sight, stacking on endless, unresolvable mysteries.

(I’m glad so many people got to work on Oahu, anyway. Maybe that was the goal.)

Actually getting somewhere, finishing something, putting the final touches on it, these can be neglected actions.

One of the flaws, I feel, of my early art training was that I never really learned how to finish a painting. The doing of it just went on until the thing I was painting rotted away or I had to stop because of a move or something.

That might be fine while a student, but still– one should learn how to “wrap it up.”

Long speeches can be that way, too. Or long goodbyes at the door.

And unless one can actually check off a project on a “To Do” list as “Done”, it doesn’t bring much satisfaction, does it?

A whole life or career can go that way.

Eternity is tough. It’s made bearable, like a long movie, by dividing it into chapters, episodes or completed sections.

Just going around completing unfinished things in one’s environment can make one feel better.

Even picking up a Starbucks cup off the ground after somebody else didn’t complete the task of throwing it away can give one a little lift. Not from altruism–just closure.

In the arts, as Mr. Spielberg inferred, and in life, bringing things to a logical conclusion has its own rewards.
Do you agree?

The End.