May 13, 2003
ampersand, open ended
an ampersand project
Open ended is a word configuration that I truly despise. I cannot think of ONE connotation in which it is a good thing.
Movies that are open ended make me crazy. Don't spend two hours making me care about a character, and then not tell me how it ends. What happened to them? Did a-b-c work out? Did x-y-z happen? Books are the same way, only I usually care even more about the characters than in movies, since I'm such an avid reader.
Open ended situations are just as bad. You know, where you can't move on in the situation until something specific happens, but you don't know what's going to happen after that. I want to know. And because I want to know, I start constructing elaborate what-if scenarios in my head.
There's only one thing that makes open-endedness better. Age. I'm finding the older that I get, the more patient I am. And in the end, that's the real point. Having the patience to wait and see how it ends.
