Endings’ romanticized allure
“You know mitch now that I am dying I’ve become much more interesting to people” a quote from Tuesday’s with Morrie that left me hanging with multiple questions and racing thoughts at an odd hour.
How we humans have collectively romanticized the end, the loss, how every dying thing interests us more.
A dying art form, a dying specie, a dying person, a dying (drifting) relationship, a fading piece of art. How to tend to ignore or know not its worth until it’s going or is gone.
Our peculiar fascination with the concept of endings often paradoxically intertwined with our reluctance to acknowledge the worth of something until it slips away, raises profound questions on human psyche.
The endless number of literary works on endings, nights, December, New Year’s Eve, withered flowers, lost relations and the list goes on. The laments and the regrets. And social media being flooded with heart wrenching tales of love, poetic expressions of longing and regret. With podcasts discussing whose tale of a heart break is more heart wrenching and lamenting faded art pieces.
Reflects how we focus more on documenting and lamenting the end instead of living it when it was flourishing. Either we dwell in a gloomy happening of the past or we live in a fear of possible gloomy happening in future.
We only start to celebrate a local skill when it is on the verge of extinction. A form of architecture suddenly becomes aesthetic when 90% of such buildings are demolished and reconstructed. Is it scarcity that brings all the attention? Rather than proactive preservation of efforts at the right time that could’ve prevented the loss we start advocating for the cause when it is almost dead!
How words of a person, we rebelled against, suddenly start to make all the sense when they’re gone.
“Death” such a sensitive topic isn’t exempted either. The fascination with mortality has reached new heights. A condition as serious as depression and anxiety is the new cool. Suffering is the new trend, and to my surprise people are choosing to stay in that pit. The inevitability of death, has led to fixation on transient.
The question persists:
Why do we write laments under the sun, standing captivated by the dying embers rather than reliving the warmth of flames?
Perhaps it is rooted in human tendency to grapple on to things. Lamenting becomes a way to explore our emotions and to face the uncomfortable reality of loss and change. In due process we create our stories on assumptions to console ourselves but we still play blind to the truth we see only what we want to and nullify the actual truth.
I think we stand captivated to the dying embers because we have lost our self-awareness and we fear the fire burning us again. Tho holding on to the embers do the same just that the process here is slower. Again, here we stand assuming the fire will burn us unaware maybe it brings us more warmth and comfort.
While romanticizing may provide a poetic lens, one should be aware of the pitfalls of fixation.
As Annaeus Seneca said “We suffer more in imagination than in reality” I strongly feel the romanticizing of endings fuel our imaginary sufferings. As our laments, poetry, films, edits etc. strum the unknown chords of emotions and as the rusted strings play we quiver with pain. It might also be a contributing factor in the increase of depression, anxiety and low self-esteem in today’s generation.
Its important for us to know when is the right time to STOP. To leave, to let go and to move on. True appreciation lies not just in elegies of what’s gone but in cherishing the present.
We are in dire need to learn not only to find beauty in fading twilight but also in vibrant dawn.