What is the Ending After This Ending?
Barely a week after the worst of California’s fires subsided, barely a month into what promises to be a time of pain and upheaval in our country, I finished reading
’s book on writing and the creative life, Consider This.I finished it the same day we went to a doctor’s appointment with someone I love, an appointment where one path pointed back to normal life and an open future while the other path pointed to most likely a long road of fighting, pain, uncertainty, and difficulty. I stared at my shoes and took a picture, because this is what waiting can feel like, can look like, can be like: a kind of faceless activity where you feel less than useless. Where time doesn’t exist. Where the pattern in the carpet can be as interesting as anything else in life.
As we sat in the room waiting for the results, a custodian wheeled out a huge cart of laundry, bigger than the back of a pickup truck, and a woman rolled a service dog through in a stroller, a tiny little dog that didn’t look convinced that it was living its best life—it all felt like a strange dream. Patients arrived and went into the back rooms and some left after treatments and others walked out looking stunned. The whole thing felt a bit like the basement in Severance, except the nurses at the counter were so kind and patient and soft-spoken.
The strangest part? I felt complete peace. We knew what we wanted to hear, but I felt that, no matter what, we would be okay. We had the strength to take whatever the next step might be.
At the end of Consider This, Palahniuk shares a few stories of how things in his life went seriously wrong. How his greatest sensitivity was exploited by someone who attended one of his readings. And throughout the book, he talks about these things with what feels like complete honesty. He stares at the pain in the world. He writes about it. He’s not numb to it, and somehow he remains open.
And he finishes the book with this:
This isn’t a happy ending, not exactly. But there’s always an ending after the ending . . . If you were my student I’d ask you to consider just one more possibility. What if all of our anger and fear is unwarranted? What if world events are unfolding in perfect order to deliver us to a distant joy we can’t conceive of at this time?
A concept like that makes you either want to punch good old Chuck in the face or weep with relief—a distant joy we can’t yet understand or even imagine? It sounds like the gospel, but not the gospel of power being peddled these days—this is a true gospel of hope and the weak becoming strong and the blind receiving sight. Good news that says, Wait, have patience, it’s not over yet . . . and even when it’s over, it’s not really over.
Could it be true? What if Chuck is right? What if, in spite of all the world is throwing at us this minute, there’s an ending beyond this one, in which our current pain is not erased but rather eclipsed by a joy we didn’t even know existed?