Skip To The End

“If I could cheat, I would skip to the end. And decide if it’s worth going through with.”

The Story

All of the following things happened in my social network this week — birth, hospitalization, death — and even a massive workplace layoff.

In all of these cases, I thought — “What’s going to happen next?”  I wanted to jump ahead to the next logical step; to be able to predict what was going to happen next in each of the affected people’s stories.  To somehow let them know that even of the midst of huge change, that they would be OK.

I thought of the people who read the last chapter of the book first, and then go back to the the beginning.  They don’t like surprises.  They want to be sure that everyone lives “happily ever after” before investing time in the actual story that leads to that conclusion.

The Lesson

We don’t get the luxury of being able to read the end of our stories first.  And all of our stories will definitely have an ending.

When change happens to us, it leaves us asking — “OK.  Now what?  What’s going to happen next?”

One of my colleagues is fond of the Robert Frost line — “The best way out is always through.”  And that’s how we must navigate change — and life.  Your life has already started.  There is no moment that life actually begins.  It’s here for the taking.  The only way out is through.

The Futureheads — “Skip To The End”