The Best Movie Ending
It seems that, as a culture, we are obsessed with battling evil. As I scroll through the current pay-per-view movies, about half of the titles show the lead character brandishing a weapon. Action films are all about people fighting the evil of other people or some existential evil. The horror genre depicts people fighting the evil of other people or, often, paranormal evil. Dramas show people battling the evil within themselves. There’s a lot of crossover, and even comedy can embody bits of the other genres. That’s an awful lot of evil fighting. Is it helpful, or even necessary?
We derive satisfaction from the best movie endings. The action hero, at the end, confronts the evil face to face and obliterates it in an explosion or a hail of gunfire. Evil has messed with the wrong guy. We’re satisfied because vicariously, through the hero, we carry out our own desire for revenge. Sometimes, in the crucial final moments, the hero has an epiphany, realizing that if he harms the person who has harmed him, he is no better than the evil he faces. When the hero drops his weapon, showing mercy to the opponent, he earns another kind of victory—a moral one. We’re satisfied because it reinforces our own moral superiority. From the ghosty, paranormal movies, we gain satisfaction through relief, when the inexplicable evil is vanquished, albeit often temporarily. Our own spiritual vigilance is justified.
What if we didn’t desire revenge, moral superiority, or relief? What if we didn’t need these things? I’m not talking about movies anymore (movies are not going away, and they provoke many more glorious and wonderful emotions than what I describe here). I’m talking about the movie of your life. What is the best ending?[1]
I believe that any forces and fates in the universe have about as much power as you ascribe to them—good and evil, love and fear, angels and demons, yourself and other people—and also time, space, gravity, electromagnetism, the weak force, and the strong force. I believe that the more we brace ourselves, lower a shoulder, and run into the battle, the more we perpetuate the battle. I believe that the more we take cover and fear the battle will befall us, the more we perpetuate the battle. Whether we fight for something or against something, we keep it alive with our energy. How about withdrawing instead of fighting? Anything from which we withdraw our energy withers and dies. Think about the space that would create for imagining and entertaining impossibilities. I LOVE impossibilities, which are just things nobody has given energy to yet. Living the impossible dream! That’s my best ending.
[1] When I say the ending of your life, I am referring not to its end in linear time, as in death. I mean the end, or goal, of your life.