The Hard Part Is Not the End of the Story

You know this already from every book and film you love. The part where it looks like they are not going to make it is never the ending. It is always somewhere around the middle.

The trouble is that when it is happening to you, you cannot see the page number.

You have no way of knowing whether you are near the end or in the middle. It feels the same from inside.

So people in a hard stretch often decide it is the ending. Not because it is, but because they cannot see over it.

I would like to offer you something better than cheering up. Not everything works out and I am not going to tell you it does, because you would know I was being careless with you.

What I will tell you is that a hard part is not evidence of an ending. It is one of the least reliable pieces of evidence there is, because every story has one and they nearly all keep going afterwards.

You are somewhere in a story. Being unable to see the rest of it is completely normal and it is not a bad sign.

You cannot see your own page number. That is not the same as being near the end.