On Ending Up
Or how life quietly happens while we are busy planning it
I’ve been thinking about one particular series of words lately: the phrasal verb “end up”. How are we ending up? The end, as in what exactly? Am I accidentally rooting myself somewhere? Where am I ending up? These were the questions crashing through my little head while I was eating my equally sliced sour green apple, sipping my tea, and, in the background once again, Ethel Cain.
Overplanning, overthinking, overquestioning… These are terms we’re slightly familiar with in this Wednesday newsletter. Trying to live with less expectation and more appreciation has somehow become the aim. Perhaps, and most probably, it became my aim, and somewhere along the way it gave me a small contradiction to carry around. A life planned so carefully, only to expect less from it? Or to expect nothing at all from what you planned?
See, I ended up tangled in my own thoughts again, feeling somewhere between stupid and idle. But then again, see… I ended up there too, somewhere I didn’t even know existed.
I wrote an email to my dear friend Ender, and I quote myself:
I don’t need to hold the court of conscience all the time. I don’t need to constantly convince myself to love someone, to desire someone, or to hate someone. My life flows wherever it flows. Whatever happens, happens.
This realisation came after the questions I created inside my own head started cornering and suffocating me. Wanting to build my own rulelessness through rules, trying to plan and compare every possible “ending up” scenario… I think that’s exactly why I started wondering what “end up” even means.
Last week, my friends from Uruguay came to Spain for a little European trip, and they were kind enough to visit us in the charming little city where some of us ended up staying after our master’s. Everyone had their own life going on; even though we knew each other, we were not particularly close friends who talked or met often. But somehow, having our friends come all the way from Uruguay brought us onto the same page again, and we all prepared a sort of reunion night together.
Around twenty people from different countries, mainly from Latin America, all ended up gathering, laughing, celebrating the news of a baby on the way, planning a wedding in Peru, talking about the future and the past all at once. I held myself still for a second and looked around. Was I really expecting to have friends coming from thousands of kilometres away, asking me how I was with genuine care in their eyes? Celebrating my new job, noticing how much my Spanish had improved?
A master’s degree I had started simply with the aim of finding a better job somehow ended up giving me incredible friendships and a much wider cultural vision, for which I am truly grateful. That feels far more important than a couple of equations or chemical reactions ever could.
This essay will not end up somewhere concrete; I think the spirit of it asks not to. Maybe that is what I have been trying to understand all along. The constant desire to arrive somewhere, to become someone, to finally feel certain about life, can slowly take away the beauty of actually living it. We become so focused on the imagined destination that we forget to notice the people, the languages, the late-night conversations, and the tiny accidental moments that quietly shape us on the way.
Perhaps “ending up” was never meant to be a fixed place at all, but rather a collection of small unforeseen arrivals.
Notes to Self
I’ve been thinking about Inner Pages lately, about how I can improve this newsletter and how I can stop myself from becoming too monotonous. I know I don’t necessarily have to constantly change or reinvent it for it to matter, but still, I would genuinely love to experiment and create something together with you for future newsletters.
I would love to choose a theme together, meet online, talk about our thoughts, write essays around a similar idea, and share them within Inner Pages. I think it could be beautiful to see how different people approach the same feeling, question, or concept through their own experiences and voices.
So, if you would like to write an essay with me and publish it in Inner Pages, please let me know. Let’s talk.
Until next time,
Ali Baran Y.