Life Is About the Journey, Not the End

A text about the adventure of life

How do you usually grade a movie? If it's good or bad, how do you decide?

Do you take this decision based on the outcome of the story or on how that hour and a half made you feel throughout the whole experience?

There’s the usual expectation that comes from seeing the preview, knowing the director, and cast. Many aspects have a way of interfering with how you are going to enjoy or not what you’re about to see.

Kickstarting

The first and only international trip I made in my life was incredible -the preparation, the wait, the excitement, and all. My wife and I were crazy about getting to know Europe.

It was an explosion of emotions for us, and we had just gotten married — everything was new. See, all of those expectations influenced how we would feel about the whole experience?

After the amazing trip, we arrived in Brazil, and there was a crazy man following us at the airport in São Paulo. We had to call security to make sure he would not do anything to us until we got on our flight back to our hometown.

The end of the trip was not as expected, but it was a journey to remember.

The movie Psycho from the genius Alfred Hitchcock portrays a bathroom murder scene. There’s a whole construction to take you to its climax with full emotional engagement. In the end, everything calms down, and you only see the corps.

The end of the scene is what you expect, a lifeless body in the bathtub. The ending is terrible from a human perspective, but when you consider storytelling, it’s one of the most acclaimed movies ever made.

The Journey

I wrote an article a while ago about the famous tv series called Game of Thrones, where I mentioned that there are so many bad things about the last season. Does that make all the previous ones terrible? Of course, I had fun and got excited or engaged in the story the whole time.

It’s surprising how many people just decided to hate the series based on the last season. I agree that it was not what we expected, but that didn’t make the Battle of the Bastards be less of an episode than it was.

Let’s stop mumbling about movies and series and get back to life.

What inspired me to write this was the article I just mentioned and the feeling of death that’s been haunting us since the pandemic started. I’ve seen many people suffering and losing loved ones. I have also lost people dear to my life.

The worst thing about the period we’ve been living in is that it’s not even possible to have a proper burial. The end becomes a lot more brutal when love is harder to exhibit in hugs being away from people.

We have been facing such a terrible situation as this moment is the end of a lot of people. Does that mean the whole journey people went through suck?

The End

Not everyone has the luck of dying heroically, as we see in lots of war movies — staying strong until the and dying for something they believe and uphold.

Have you ever listened to the entire album from a band you like? The last song is not usually the best one, but it’s a part of it as it has to end.

It may not be as epic as you expected, and it shouldn’t be — because life is about the journey, no the end.

One of the things I have learned since this virus nightmare started was to enjoy the journey with people I love.

The end will come for all of us one way or another, so the only thing we can do is enjoy the company of the people around us.

I refuse to believe that our lives are just a bunch of scripts whose writer was too lazy to give a proper ending.

Thank you for reading.

If you want to know about this Eurotrip I made with my wife, you may take a look at the following post published in The Masterpiece.