What will happen if a child asks you to tell a story?
You will probably tell him one.
But then the next question he will probably ask is "What happened in the end ?"
Do you have an answer to this?
I say NO.
You probably did not begin the story in order to end it; in fact the essence of the tale lies in telling "What happened next ?" as for what is the end, no one know and no one can tell.
It is a contemporary conceit of human mind that stories and life must be defined by a conclusion or consummations to be wished and strived for.But "the end" isn't true for even the fictions we come across everyday.
You would always want to see and believe one of those Hollywood films that conclude with the hero and heroine in a passionate clinch and then the titles on the screen announce "The End". But even before you leave the theatre you know that it is not the end at all. There are going to be many more such passionate clinches, then wedding, then more clinches, and tiffs and arguments over breakfast and laundry and house-cleaning and what not. All those things will happen, thoughts of which never crossed the starry-eyed heroine's or heavily built hero's minds. There are perhaps thousands of ugly, not so ugly and beautiful truths that are sought to be concealed behind the great lie "they lived happily ever after".
The story does not end when the screenwriter pretends it does.
As a matter of fact, no story ends even with the great symbol of termination. Death.
For when the protagonist dies the story continues. His widow will either suffer bitterly or will celebrate madly. His son will either turn to drugs or will seek revenge or will continue to live the way he used to. The story continues. It never ends.
There is, in short, no end to the story of life.There are merely pauses. An end is an arbitary invention of the story teller.
Today's end is, after all, tomorrow's begining. This is one fact most of us fail to understand all our lives.
