What we lose when we start with the ending

It’s hard to grasp how uncertain the present feels until you’re in it. Looking back, we compress complex stories into simple narratives with clear outcomes.

One of the first things you learn about JFK, for example, is that he was assassinated. But for people alive then, this was the most shocking end imaginable — a sudden loss of someone who felt vivid and real in their lives. The way each generation experiences “JFK” is radically different, and the more truthful, lived version fades a little more each day.

Right now I’m reading Tune In, a majestic, enormous book about the lives of the Beatles. This first volume is over a thousand pages and only goes up to the week before their first record came out. The book is so detailed and rich you really get to spend time with John, Paul, George, and Richey (as Ringo was then known) as real-life teenagers — not the inevitable superstars they became. It feels closer to living as a Beatle than learning about them.

Today we experience the Beatles as the greatest band ever. But for the first three years of their fame, the world assumed they were just another one-hit wonder. People alive then got to be surprised — again and again — as the Beatles kept defying expectations. Yet today their greatness is the first thing we’re told.

When we start with the ending, it’s like taking a puzzle apart instead of putting it together. We know the final picture right from the beginning, so we skip over the doubts, missteps, and chaos it took to get there.

Just because things turned out well in the end — or appear that way from the outside — doesn’t mean it felt that way in the moment. The same terror of the unknown, the same doubts we all feel, were things the greats carried too. Think of Van Gogh, whose success only came after death — how do we make sense of that life?

The unfolding nature of things is uncomfortable. It’s not easy to sit with the swings and the unknowns. But that pregnant pause — when the world could still go right or left — is the beauty of life. It’s the spark of creativity that comes from God, in all its forms.

Though we yearn for clarity, the universe whispers caution. If you listen closely to those who’ve made it, you’ll find what many of them want most is to return to the unknown. Kurt Cobain said he wished he could’ve stayed forever in the moment right before Nirvana got big. Virgil Abloh believed no piece mattered more than having the freedom to make the next thing.

The destination isn’t the goal. The unknown is.