Grand Finale

As the academic year's ending, I'm constantly trying to find a satisfying conclusion, some sense of resolution or at least acknowledgment that it's the end. It hasn't come for the most part. Everyone's always so eagerly looking forward to new beginnings instead of realizing that something quite significant, no matter good or bad, is always coming to an end right before us.

And when I was least expecting it, Professor Jensen (Critical Issues in Journalism) hit me with the conclusion I'd been looking for. He himself was seeking a way to close his course for the year, bringing up the question of what it means to be a human in terms of the world in which we live today and which we humans created. He concluded in a beautifully understated anticlimax, resigned to the fact that there is no great finale, only infinite questions. And it seems that there is never a great finale in life, only ends that lead to new beginnings and new ideas and new questions. After all, when it comes to the end, what will your life have amounted to? Yet another question. And maybe it is the constant birth of new questions that is the driving force and goal of life.