The Midnight Club and Embracing Death Through the Story of Life
The moral case for exploring your life in the face of death.
We all get to the end of a story eventually.
No matter how much we might want something to continue, at some point it has to stop. Sometimes it's sudden and tragic, other times it's happy and leaves us with everything resolved. More often than not it can be something in between the two or something entirely different. The only thing that's isn't really at issue is that it will come to an end. For the people who went along the journey, this can be incredibly sad. Either because of how it ended or because we wanted it to continue. We wanted more stories and more ideas to come along and keep things going. But a story which doesn't end isn't really much of a story. People want a resolution to things. They want to feel as though what they went through is worth it and the only way to do that is to find out how it plays out.
Which isn't to say that the rest of the story isn't important. Part of what makes a story's ending so powerful is all the things leading up to it. The way the characters draw you in and make you feel something for them. That's what gives you the need to know whether they get what they want or not. Sadly, we can't always get what we want in the end, but that doesn't keep us from wanting it for them. In large part because we go through it with them. We experience what they feel and within the time we spend with them, we want what they want. Their desires become our desires, even if we don't want them to be.
Our lives follow a similar path. There's a beginning, a journey through it, and an end. For some of us, the resolution is satisfying, but for others not so much. No matter what you do though, your story will play out at some point. An ending is coming. The trick is to make the story worth it along the way. To give not only yourself but the people around you a sense of satisfaction about the part they played in your story. But the thing you owe it to the most is yourself. Finding a way to enjoy the life you have and the story you're telling.
The Midnight Club is very much about the story of a person's life. Through Ilonka, Anya, Kevin, Sandra, played brilliantly by Iman Benson, Ruth Codd, Igby Rigney and Annarah Cymone, and the rest of the club, we see the story being played out. This happens because they know how their story ends. All of them are there because they know the end is coming. They have terminal cancer which simply isn't going to get better. Their story is done, it's only a matter of time. So the only thing they have is each other and the stories they tell. Stories about the lives they'll never lead and the experiences they'll never have. Even if many of them are a fantasy in nature.
It's at least better than the story of their own lives. Ones with pretty definite conclusions near the horizon. Yet there's something beautiful about the stories themselves.
Because that's all they have left... a beautiful story.
Do yourself a favour and check out how to embrace the end by checking out The Midnight Club as soon as you can.
The Midnight Club is available on Netflix.
Up Next:
