The Beauty of Unfinished Stories
On my shelf sits a novel I never finished, its plot unresolved, characters frozen in mid-action. Once a source of guilt, now it’s a reminder that some stories are meant to linger, not end. Unfinished stories are not failures; they’re alive, evolving in the imagination, inviting us to revisit them with new eyes. Think of the painting left on the easel, the song hummed but never recorded, the journey cut short by rain. These moments hold potential, a “what if” that stays vibrant in the mind. Filmmaker Werner Herzog said, “The world is not dangerous because of those who do harm, but because of those who look on and do nothing”—but sometimes, pausing is not doing nothing; it’s allowing space for wisdom to grow. When I let a story rest, I give it time to ripen, to find its true ending in the silence. So let us honor the unfinished. They are not loose ends, but threads connecting our past courage to our future wisdom, proof that some magic needs time to unravel.