Endings by Jina Wallwork

Inspired by the statue Andrieu d’Andres, Monumental by Auguste Rodin

I’ve been pacing the floor as I try to make sense of my life. I want to understand and I look for answers but my mind struggles with the requests that are beyond its capabilities. I don’t have the answers. I will never understand her behavior and all conversation is seen as an enemy to peace. This circumstance is labeled as an ending, yet the description seems misleading.

I have become obsessed with endings. Both stage and screen is filled with deception because they display stories that contain a final chapter. Motivations are revealed and questions are answered. Everything seems so tidy and we become comforted by a complete view of the story, yet life is alien to this kind of finale. My story is never fully my own. People come and go without revealing their full character. Some things never make sense and situations hang above me while I beg for an ending that has some kind of clarity. My story is a book that is full, yet I can only read certain pages. The parts that are written by others are in a language that I don’t speak. I will never fully understand my own life. I desire to read those pages so they can explain everything and bring clarity to a mind that has allowed stress to shake its stability, although I’ve come to believe that endings are an illusion.

There is no conclusion. Life is forever unresolved and unfinished. I will never be complete. I’m a constant work in progress, growing and learning as time goes by. My life is messy and difficult to understand. Sometimes we crave a conversation to resolve a matter and create a true ending where we can find a new understanding that encourages us to think about the future, but this isn’t what is necessary. Our sense of peace is shaped by our ability to find acceptance. We come to accept that the answers that we desire may never arrive and there will always be people that we will never understand. She stares at me with confusion as we both try to understand each other. Sometimes all you can do is find acceptance, and you don’t need to understand something in order to accept it. Things would be so much harder if that was a necessary requirement.

We can stop pacing the floor with a mind filled with anxiety because we know that this is normal. Life is complicated and there are people and situations that will always be unexplained and unresolved. We can have a peaceful mind and an open heart because we accept that some things will always be far beyond our understanding. We can stop pacing the floor and we can heal our hearts and minds because we have found a place of calm, despite the chaos that is a natural part of every life.