Nothing Lasts Forever
Your relationships will all change drastically
I’m going to do something a little different this time.
I’m going to talk in-depth about one of my favorite shows. I promise you the point will be worthwhile. You’ll appreciate the show more and (hopefully) learn a valuable life lesson.
Fair warning, major spoilers ahead for the show in question.
The Greatest Finale of All Time
Let me let you in on a little secret: I loved the finale of How I Met Your Mother.
This makes me a bit unusual, because the reaction against this particular series finale was quite extreme. Most of the people I’ve talked to hated it, the internet seems to hate it. I even remember after it aired that Sports Center anchors hated it (I believe I remember that they called a team’s performance “more disappointing than the How I Met Your Mother finale).
So why did everyone hate it so much?
Chances are there are lots of reasons, but they all revolve around a stunning twist at the end. Although some people had predicted it, it was still shocking that the show followed through with it.
A quick recap of the premise of the show for those not familiar:
Ted Mosby is a hopeless romantic who desperately wants to find “the one” and get married, but things just never seems to work out for him. The story is narrated by his future self telling his children how he met their mother.
This sets our expectations right from the beginning. It’s going to be a long hard journey for Ted, but things work out in the end.
In the first episode, Ted talks about falling for a girl he met in a bar. His kids presumably think that he’s talking about their mom, but at the end of the episode he mentions that it was the story of how he met their “Aunt Robin” and that the story of how he met their mom will be much longer.
He has an on again off again relationship with Robin, but can never seem to get over her. In later seasons, Robin falls in love with Ted’s friend Barney (Barney would remind me to say “best” friend here) and they end up getting married.
The mother of Ted’s children is first introduced just before the last season, and we aren’t shown how she and Ted meet until the very final episode.
The twist ending is that Robin and Barney end up getting divorced and that Tracy, the eponymous “mother” of the show, ends up dying in the last episode.
Ted gets back together with Robin and audiences everywhere complain that a terrible finale ruined an otherwise great show.
Even writing that summary, it sounds like a pretty bad finale. So why do I like it so much?
Because it’s a powerful defense of the show’s core premise.
In order to understand what the show was trying to do with the finale, you need to understand what the show was trying to do in the first place.
Here’s a useful question to start with, what was How I Met Your Mother about?
Hint: it wasn’t a love story and it wasn’t about how Ted met the mother of his children.
I would argue that the show was about dealing with change.
Here is, as best as I can describe it, the main theme, the central thesis of the whole show:
Nothing lasts forever, but it’s okay. If you have the right perspective, the universe has been conspiring for you, not against you.
The main way that this theme had been conveyed throughout most of the show was the fact that we knew that Ted was going to get together with, and have children with the woman of his dreams.
The thing that wasn’t going to last forever was his seemingly futile search to find “the one.”
This made the theme of the show comforting and hopeful.
The theme of the show becomes more uncomfortable when it points out that good things don’t last forever either.
The first reason why the two-part finale becomes uncomfortable doesn’t even have anything to do with Tracy dying. It has to do with Barney and Robin’s divorce splitting up the gang.
This is part of what makes most finales uncomfortable in the first place. The show is forced to remind you, by the mere fact of it’s ending alone, that the journey that you followed the characters on has an ending. It’s just a chapter in their lives. They don’t spend the rest of their lives hanging out in the same way they used to. Things change.
In the show, this is especially painful because Robin, as the ex-girlfriend of one of the guys and ex-wife of another, doesn’t really fit in the group anymore.
What’s really interesting is the fact that the last season is the simultaneous buildup to two events: Barney and Robin getting married and Ted meeting Tracy. The actual wedding and the actual meeting aren’t shown until the last few minutes of the show, not until after you’ve been painfully made aware that neither relationship lasts forever.
Death and divorce are pretty heavy topics for the finale of a sitcom.
There’s no way around it, Tracy dying at the end was devastating. There was obviously a part of me that didn’t like it. This show had a way of lulling you into a false sense of security before punching you in the soul. It pulled this move several times.
The reason that I think it’s beautiful is because it is the ultimate test of the show’s thesis.
Remember, I’m saying that the show essentially exists to defend the notion that nothing lasts forever, but that everything can still be okay.
All the time we were thinking that everything was going to be okay because Tracy, who the show constantly reminds us is literally the perfect girl for Ted, is coming. But nothing lasts forever and no one lives forever, what happens when Tracy dies, is all lost, or does life go on?
The answer the show gives is that life goes on. In fact, the universe had already been at work the whole time to set up a path for him to move on in the form of his emotional connection to Robin.
Some people see what I see and say they like the idea, but that the execution was wrong. It was too sudden, too jarring. I agree. Watching that finale was a major emotional toll. But with life it often is like that.
Why This Matters
At some point in your life, you’re going to experience change for the worse. You’re going to experience loss.
It could be death, or it could just be a good friend moving away, changing the dynamic of the relationship forever.
Things change all the time, and many of these changes are unwelcome and scary.
A critical component of your emotional health and well-being is going to be your ability to adapt and deal with change.
Nothing lasts forver.
One of the lessons that I’ve learned in the last 10 years is that all of your relationships are destined to change dramatically.
When I was in college, I had a network of friends that was as wide and as deep at any point in my life.
There was an inner circle of close friends that I was convinced would remain tight forever. We all stayed in town after graduating and were there for each other’s weddings and supported each other during the births of all our children (between us all there have been quite a few kids). Over time however, things changed like they always do.
Different people went their different ways for different reasons. There’s no hard feelings, but at the same time none of the relationships are the same even though we all think of each other quite fondly.
Recently, my wife and I have also seen many close family members move away. Most of our family used to live in a two hour radius, but in the past year it has expanded to an eight hour radius. There’s no way around it, you don’t see family as often if they live eight hours away as compared to two hours away.
Maintain a Core of Deep Friendships
As far as I can tell, one of they keys of staying steady throughout the ebb and flow of relationships in your life is to make sure to always have at least a couple deep relationships that you can count on at any given moment.
This means that as you lose touch with people you were once close with, you need to make an effort to forge deep relationships with someone new.
If you tend to be more extroverted, it’s the “deep” part that is likely the challenge for you.
If you tend to be more introverted, it’s the “someone new” part that’s the most likely hang up.
One advantage of the institution of marriage is that it is a relationship that both parties agree will come before anything else in their life. I don’t think everyone needs to get married, but it is a fantastic way to have a solid relationship for life (and to give your spouse the gift of a solid relationship for life).
The important thing is to make sure that change never leaves you completely isolated. If you tend to be more introverted like me, you might undervalue relationships. Don’t make that mistake. Humans are social creatures and drifting into isolation is unambiguously bad news.
Conclusion
Nothing lasts forever, but everything is going to be okay.
This is the fifth in a series based on my article 30 Lessons About Life You Should Learn Before Turning 30. Shoutout to Dr. Christine Bradstreet 🌴 for the idea to turn the post into an in-depth series.