Last weekend, two of my favourite TV shows came to an end. The Big Bang Theory came to a satisfying finale with the brilliant but nerdy couple Sheldon and his wife, Amy, receiving the Nobel Prize and celebrating it with their gang of friends. This was followed by Leonard and Penny reminiscing as they walked through the costumes and sets lulling the audience to a calm acceptance of the end as the lights went out set after set. Closure.

Then, there was the much-anticipated finale of the Game of Thrones. Many didn’t like the way it ended but I wasn’t expecting much since it was, after all, just a TV show, and so I wasn’t greatly disappointed. But, I would have preferred it if John Snow had outwitted his Queen, Daenerys Targaryen, and claimed the Iron Throne, but that would have required an extended season to develop the intrigue and subterfuge to play out the conclusion and it was clear that the producers wanted to bring the show to a quick end.

They were good stories but when the end came I could accept it, mainly because the mood I was in around that time was to accept endings of stories in my own life. My youth is behind me and I have to come to terms with the fact that age has caught up! My youth was a good story, but now each day is a page I attempt to write. I have to think about what I want to do and can do and do what I can because the page is a blank! But, I try. And each day ends a good day — despite the problems!

This blog is one of the new stories I am writing. It couldn’t have happened if I hadn’t ended the old story — the old story of a past that just couldn’t resolve. It went on and on and on — until I decided to bring it to a close. Then I started thinking of new things and this blog was born.

I was in this frame of mind when I watched the finale of the Game of Thrones, looking for some clue to make sense of the ending after the Queen’s untimely exit. I looked and looked and maybe I saw it or maybe it was just my imagination but it appeared in the last scene when John Snow on his horse taking his people from Castle Black into an unknown future looks into the camera and the muscles of his tense, sad face eases ever so slightly. Or, was I just transferring my own thoughts to him? Maybe, or John Snow somehow faintly saw a new beginning.  That’s another story.

That’s how I arrived at my conclusion that old stories must end for new stories to begin. If we are stuck in the old story, we will never get out and try to write a new story for ourselves. We need to tell our own stories because they say who we are. The collective sum of individual stories reveals the culture of the community. Some people like to be part of old stories — especially if they are good stories — and don’t want out. Well, then, they can’t write their own stories. They’ll be trapped in someone’s else’s story.

But, not me. I want to write new stories. The old I can let go. If there’s something good about the old that I want to keep, I would because it is my choice. But, it won’t stop me from turning my back on the old to start a new story or stories.

I don’t know how that will turn out, but I’m exploring …