270. Unwanted Conclusions

You are watching a film and you have become engrossed in its story. The plot is exciting, the characters are compelling, and the stakes feel significant.

Your attention is mostly on the film itself, but you’re also thinking about what you’re seeing and hearing. You cannot stop yourself from thinking any more than you can stop yourself from feeling. Thoughts and feelings simply arise when they must.

One of the things you’re thinking about is the approaching conclusion of the film. You think you can see where the story is going — to a place where the protagonists have overcome their difficulties. You’ve developed this expectation partly because of other films you’ve seen, but also because you want it to come true. You care about the characters and you want to witness their success.

When the story takes a sudden turn, you naturally find yourself feeling anxious about your desired outcome. When it later becomes clear that success is not the final destination of these characters, you feel disappointment, grief, and perhaps even anger. You’re upset because you feel the characters didn’t deserve their fate and this is the only one they have been given.

In response to your feelings, you start thinking about alternatives — events that could have gone differently in order to resolve the story in a more satisfying way. You think about the choices the characters made and where they might have gone wrong. You think about how you would have acted in their shoes in order to avoid the unwanted conclusion. All of these considerations feel urgent and necessary.

You need to come to terms with the film in a way that makes sense of the lives of the characters and your own life as well. This process can be unsettling, bothersome, and even frustrating. You would never have felt this way had the film concluded in the way you expected.

You are suffering but you are also learning many things. You’re learning about the kinds of lives people can have, about their motivations and choices, about possibility and risk. You are also learning something about yourself, and it is perhaps this growth in your awareness that is the most important conclusion of all.