The Beauty Of The Unfinished Sentence

How my biggest struggle as a writer also serves as a metaphor for my approach to life

Hello, World!

My name is Lilian and I am a writer. I say that very loosely though as I firmly believe anyone can be a writer.

Writing has always been a cathartic activity to me, from my adolescent years when I filled up pages in my Hello Kitty-themed journal to my many unpublished drafts on Medium.

Or from a more archaic time when it was somewhat socially acceptable to have extensive back and forth private conversations on the very public Facebook wall.

Someone really should have taught me about the PM (private message). I now look back and chuckle at how much of my personal daily life I shared on that public platform.

Among them, my current favorites:

Jessica, what time are we meeting at the library?

or

If I give you my heart, will you take care of it?

or a more cringeworthy

Look to your right, I might not be there. Look to your left, I might not be there. But look inside of your heart, I’ll always be there.

You see — I am, and have always been, a writer. Some may even say that Lilian, circa 2010 was a poet.

Jokes aside, I write because it is a safe haven for the many thoughts that float around in my mind.

In some ways, putting my thoughts into written words on a page brings some sort of order to the madness that is my brain. In other ways, it allows me to bask in the disorder, capturing exactly that in its entirety, at that very given moment. To appreciate the mess, if you will.

Don’t spoil the ending!

From literature, to poetry, to cinema, it seems that the ending of a piece of work is crucial. The ending brings some type of closure to the story.

Researchers have shown in the Peak-End Rule the phenomenon where people primarily remember the “most emotionally intense” periods of an experience and its ending. The climax is followed by some type of resolution, and that resolution brings value to the audience. And there are countless people who cringe at the ending of a movie that has no resolution at all, no full circle to the story. So, the ending is important. Why else would you watch?

With that, writers may struggle to craft the ultimate ending. Writers may even start with an ending already in mind, and while that ending may evolve in the process, the ending is precisely the destination that people focus on. Where’s the lesson? What’s the punchline? What is the meaning behind the 500 words that I’ve written up until this very point? The ending is often what makes or breaks a piece for a writer.

Your life is a story and you’re the main character

I look at life in a similar fashion — our life is a story and we are the writers of our narrative. I walk through life pretending that there is some omniscient camera that knows perfectly when to zoom in, zoom out, and highlight all the meaningful moments. Cue the perfect soundtrack to the movie that is my life.

And on days when I am feeling extra dramatic, (there are many), I pretend I am Ted Mosby from ‘How I Met Your Mother’ and even silently narrate in my mind at the end of the “episodes” of my life.

This way of thinking has helped me to reshape my outlook on life, and reframe my perspective when I was down in the slumps. It has brought me clarity after transformative events have taken place like a breakup, a rejection from a job I interviewed for, or a closing of a big chapter, like graduating college. In moments where I felt lost, I took refuge in the idea that there was some larger moment I was being prepared for. That there was something great for me waiting in the next chapter, the next episode.

The next best part of my life was not yet written

If there’s anything that writing has taught me, it is that the experience of writing is just as meaningful as any revelation that I uncovered by the end of it. To just write is enough.

And while I like to believe “everything happens for a reason,” perhaps it is worthwhile to believe the opposite. Trying to dissect each part of life to understand some greater meaning, may take away from living in the moment.

Sometimes there will never be a real reason for why we experience the things we do. There may not be a greater purpose to the difficult hardship you went through. Sometimes, things just are. And that’s okay.

Life is not a cohesive story

We are the writers of our narrative and yes, to some degree we have control over the progression of our story.

But life is not a cohesive story. It is messy, winding, and unpredictable.

Each of us has a unique narrative to tell, each filled with unique moments — moments that collectively form our beginning, our middle, and our end. Each is equally important.

If the value of writing to a writer is the act of writing itself, then the value of a moment is simply that moment. I want to bask in all the good, the bad, and the ugly. My goal is to surrender my need to control the direction of my life, and trust that each individual moment is enough.

Ironically, that is the lesson behind this piece. To find beauty in the unfinished sentence is to appreciate life’s moments for all that they are, unaltered and unabridged.

To write for the sake of writing, to live for the sake of living — without a destination in mind.