-My Fair Lady
Andrew Carnegie created one of the most valuable businesses in the world from nothing then gave away his wealth. Andrew Carnegie’s autobiography, written later in his life, abruptly ends. When Breath Becomes Air is an autobiography about a student studying to become a top neurosurgeon. He gets diagnosed with stage IV cancer and dies mid-way through the story. There are amazing lessons to learn from unfinished works.
Game of Thrones feels the same way. If someone has never watched Game of Thrones, I recommend they watch the first four seasons then stop. Entire storylines and character arcs begin and finish within those four seasons. When only watching 4 seasons, many character arcs and storylines won’t conclude, but that’s ok. It’s better to leave them unfinished than to bastardize them the way the showrunners did. Maybe one day, if George RR Martin finishes the books, season 5 onward can be reshot.
Something similar happened with the anime Fullmetal Alchemist. Anime are almost all derived from mangas (Japanese comic books). Fullmetal Alchemist was a popular manga. An anime, Fullmetal Alchemist, was made based on the manga. However, the manga wasn’t finished, and the anime had to continue after it caught up with the source material. The anime writers made up their own story and ending. It was the most popular anime that year and even had an acclaimed movie come out as a sequel. Unlike the last seasons of Game of Thrones, fans loved it.
Years later, the manga finished. It was a work of art. A brand new anime was made to follow the manga from start to finish. People who only watched the original anime were confused, “I already saw this story. It was great. I don’t need a duplicate.” The stories are similar during the first ten episodes then go on completely different paths. The anime based on the finished manga is called Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood. Its success dwarfed the original Fullmetal Alchemist. Over a decade later, Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is still regarded as one of, if not the best, anime of all time. It was properly finished.
I want to write an essay every week until I run out of ideas. I hope my writing has an impact on the world I live in and after I’m gone. I’ve been writing an essay/week for over four years. I have over a hundred ideas for new essays. I come up with new ideas all the time but only write one per week. There will always be more ideas. Ideas are cheap, execution is hard. My essays will never be finished.
No matter how much I write. No matter how much I accomplish; My essays will stop one day. My life will be unfinished. It’ll come to an end. On a long enough time scale, whether decades or millennia, my work and life will be forgotten. I hope some of my ideas will be passed down to benefit humanity.
We’ll all leave this world. What do we leave behind?
Legacy. Purpose. If lucky, we leave behind value that with the passage of time is missed. Maybe institutions with principles that endure. Or hard learned lessons that others can gain from. And they in turn, can pass those lessons down.
Andrew Carnegie was inspired by Thomas Mellon’s autobiography who in turn was inspired by Ben Franklin’s autobiography. Others can build from where we left off. Others can live their own stories utilizing our frameworks for how to perceive and navigate the world.
Things don’t need to neatly wrap up. Life doesn’t come in a three act structure. We overlay narratives onto our lives, but those are artificial constructs to help us give meaning to our experiences. Narratives organize the complexity of reality, but they’re not an accurate representation of it. Life isn’t a story. It’s a dance. It’ll never be finished.