From November 2019 until November 2020, Mark Fischbach and Ethan Nestor-Darling hosted a YouTube channel called Unus Annus. They put up at least one video every day for a year and then deleted the channel. This was their plan from the start as a way to highlight two of their ideas: appreciate what you’ve got while you have it, and endings are what make things special and meaningful. Those ideas made up the underlying theme of their channel even if they didn’t talk about them in every video.
While I completely agree with appreciating what you have while you have it, I completely disagree with their notion about endings. I think it’s too simplistic and ignores too many important things. Endings by themselves don’t make things special or make us miss things once they’re over. After all, lots of things end without being missed: abusive relationships, diseases from which someone fully recovers, wars, boring conversations, etc. Plus the people who say that endings make things special and meaningful have no experience with things that last forever, so how can they know whether or not they’re correct?
Rather than making things meaningful, endings just make us miss the things we love once they’re gone. Effort, consistency, and love make things special, meaningful, and worth doing. The best relationships are the ones with the most consistent commitments to love, not the ones that end soonest. I have many relationships in my life that I absolutely love, whether they’ve been going for a short while or as long as I can remember. I also have had many bad relationships that ended and I’m glad they’re over. If endings made relationships special, then I’d miss the bad ones that have ended and not care as much (or at all) about the wonderful ones that are still going.
The longer a relationship lasts, the more love grows and deepens and the better both participants learns how to love each other (as long as they both remain committed to love). I know how to better love someone after I’ve known them for many years than I did when we had only known each other for a few months. I don’t see why that couldn’t continue without limit. I’ve never known two people in a committed, loving relationship who have said that their love was worse after many decades together than it was when they first started. If love continues to grow and relationships continue to improve without limit, then relationships that lasted literally forever would continually grow deeper, more loving, and more meaningful.
Even if there is any truth to this idea about endings making things meaningful, endings would still only be one piece of the puzzle. Another necessary piece would be the knowledge that whatever one loves will someday end. After all, lots of things end before someone becomes aware of that fact, if they’re ever aware of it at all. Plenty of little kids lose family members before they learn about death. Yet despite having little to no concept of death, young kids still want to spend time with friends and family, play games, watch TV and movies, etc. Their lives don’t lack meaning for the first several years and then suddenly become special and enjoyable once they learn about death. Why? Because they put effort into what they do. Even with the knowledge that something will end, effort and love are still needed to make it special.
All of the above plays into Unus Annus. Mark and Ethan didn’t simply put up slapdash videos for a year and then delete the channel. Hardly anybody, if anybody at all, would have cared about or missed the channel if that’s all they had done. Instead, they (and everyone else on their team) put a ton of time and effort into every single video they posted. They took time away from their own channels and lives to create the best content they could for Unus Annus. Content that showcased their personalities, humor, creativity, and hearts. As a result of all that effort and love, plenty of people who watched the channel while it was around miss it now that it’s gone, including myself. That wouldn’t have happened if it had simply existed for a while and then ended without ever including any effort or love.
My life with my dog Sawyer was special and loving even in our earliest days together. I rarely thought about his eventual death as dwelling too much on death can lead to desperation on my part, which is not love. It can also make me worry to the point that I miss out on a beautiful relationship while it’s still happening. Our love grew and deepened and strengthened over our 11 years together, even while he was still in good health and had many years of life ahead of him. I don’t believe that our relationship would have been any less special if it had lasted longer or if it had continued endlessly. I hope I’ll see Sawyer again someday and that we’ll be best friends forever. I don’t see why that would ruin our relationship or make our love for each other any less signficant; I actually find that notion appalling, along with the notion that our relationship was only special and meaningful since it was finite. That completely ignores what each of us did for each other and puts our wonderful relationship on the same level as every horrible relationship I’ve had. I hate that my time on Earth with Sawyer is over, I hope to see him again, and I’m grateful that we made our time together so wonderful, special, loving, and meaningful. I hope that my other relationships can get to a similar level if they’re not already there.