Allow this movie nerd an analogy.
Any good ending is like a good end-credits scene. The right timing, the right music… just the right level of nostalgia.
Think Transformers with What I’ve Done. The Matrix with Wake Up. Or the Fellowship of the Ring with May It Be.
It makes you feel the ending as you remember what happened. It causes you to reflect and bask in the glory of what came before, and may even bring a sense of closure that satisfies you.
Music Lessons
It was a very brief, subtle pause after the final note had been played. Like we had to let the last vibrations dissipate before the ending had actually taken place. He made us remain completely still for that moment and forbade us from putting our instruments down until his baton did. Why? It was in that moment that the listener got to properly experience the ending.
It’s quite intuitive. Anyone who has watched a rushed movie or book knows what it feels like when a character or plot makes unnatural jumps. A moment of profundity gets lost for the sake of brevity. Tsk.
Did you see the 2019 remake of The Lion King? Speaking of moments, take a moment and weep over how inferior it was to the original.
Done?
Good.
Case in point: Nala and Simba rediscover their long-lost friendship so quickly that we lose what could have been a powerful moment (indeed it was in the original – try watching them one after the other). The natural, personal rhythm is lost. No pause to take in what’s happening, to relate to the experience, to feel the gravity of rediscovered friendship and lost years. Just a rushed plot point.
It wouldn’t have mattered if Beyonce and Donald Glover had acted better than Moira Kelly or Matthew Broderick (they didn’t) or if the emotions on Nala and Simba’s faces were as relatable as the original (they weren’t). The rhythm of life, the moment required to process all that had happened since they last saw each other, was lost. And so was the meaning of it all (at least to this disappointed Lion King fan…).
Our Brains Don’t Move At Lightspeed
The rule seems to be thus: A good ending requires time to feel and experience previous events.
But why?
One reason may be our need to process our experience. Our brains don’t work at light speed, after all.
We. Need. Time.
Time to register what happened, make neural connections, and to determine significance (or lack thereof).
A purpose of an ending, after all, is to learn something; to change and grow from whatever the experience was, whether movie, book, or song.
How much does it suck when we get caught in patterns and cycles? When we end up doing the same damn thing again and again and never seem to learn?
The tragedy of it is that often we could have learned from previous experiences and broken out of the cycle of insanity. But we didn’t. Chapter after chapter in our lives, we repeat the same mistakes. Why? We rarely take the time to think about the previous chapter and visualize how the next chapter might go differently.
As I write this post, 2020 has just begun. I’ve already heard plenty of 20/20 vision jokes, but there are golden nuggets of truth in them: it’s prime time to make for a good, forward-looking ending of 2019 and the last decade.
Take your time. Let it all sink in. Process it. Dream and visualize as to what the next year, or next ten years, may bring.
