Love and Death: Storylines of the Week

My philosophy of life can be summed up as follows: "It pretty much all works out in the end..."

The problem with this philosophy is A) there is no real clear indicator as to when the end will arrive and B) there is no clear indicator that the end will be the happy ending that we imagine.

But inevitably in my life I have found that what I first took to be bad endings are, in fact, better endings than I could have imagined. My short sighted view had me missing the forest for the trees.

You could say that I view my life... and yours... as the storyline of a novel. A novel in which we are the author, actor, and, more often than not, bit player. Because, you see, we are all the stars of our own shows... but we are the bit players in everyone else's story. And since there are more of you than there of me, I am... a great deal of the time... a bit player in other people's stories. I am alright with that role, as I hope you are about being a supporting character in my story. But I find the story lines... mine and yours... fascinating. The twists, the turns... the bad writing and the moments of sheer prize winning brilliance. And the story lines always work out in the end... some tragedies and some triumphs. But they all resolve... eventually.

I was a bit player in two such plot lines that came to the close of a chapter this week... one happy, one sad. One about death. And one about birth. One in which the star meets his end after a life that was not always well lived. And one in which the girl gets the guy... and the family... and lives (hopefully) happily ever after. I had no speaking lines in either plot, but instead served as audience... providing only reaction shots as the drama played out.

As far as "it pretty much works out in the end"... death would seem to be a pretty bad version of "the end"... and yet I don't believe that. In this particular case, it was the right end to this chapter... and since my personal beliefs include a belief in the here-after... it is the end of chapter, not of the book... and the next chapter might well be a lot happier than this one. And the girl? Well... her story is really just starting. It is a sequel to a best seller...and one that will have many more twists and turns, and ups and downs before it is all over.

My own storyline has many plot lines that are in various stages of resolution. Most will end in ways that I really can't fathom. Some happy, some not... but I have lived enough to know that what is certain is they all of those stories will work themselves out in the end.

The trick is to pick a good supporting cast to help you through both the good and the bad.