I just finished watching a mini-series on DVD. It was one of those that has a cliff-hanger at the end of almost every episode. I couldn't wait to to find out what happened next and, of course, I wanted to know what would happen in the end. But this series didn't really end the story. There was no knowing "how it all turned out". Obviously the last episode was made without the producers realizing it would be the last. Otherwise, the loose ends would have been tied up and the characters would have lived happily, or not so happily, ever after. At first this really bothered me. I didn't like the feeling of everything being up in the air. But when I thought about it, I realized that this is how life actually is -- a series of events, some favorable, some unfavorable, with no end. Something about that feeling of being left up in the air felt so unsettling, and yet so alive. The end of anything is a stopping point -- the end of movement. Everything must end for something new to emerge, but when we hold on to endings from the past or are fixed on how things will end in the future, we stop the natural flow of life. We stop the aliveness.
Meditation can help us give up our attachment to endings. Letting go of outcomes, letting go of having certain experiences and not having others, letting go of the attempt to make it "turn out right", allows us to experience the aliveness that is present moment to moment.