I just recently finished reading the Wheel of Time series by Robert Jordan. It’s a fantasy book series that spans 14 tome like volumes. Jordan spent like 15 years working on it and died sometime after publishing the 11th book. His widow brought in Brandon Sanderson to go through his comprehensive notes and finish the series so that fans who had invested themselves in the task of reading that far wouldn’t wind up getting no payout. I feel like Sanderson did a great job and you could argue that those last books are the best ones in the series.
The thing that struck me though, was how I felt after I finished it. I enjoyed the series, immensely. It was worth the time I invested and I felt like the ending tied things up in a very satisfying way for me. But at the end I was overcome with sadness. There are plenty of books or series of books I’ve felt that way about. Some TV series too. You get through the end of them and you’re sad that there’s nothing left. You just don’t want to let go yet.
Most of the times I’ve gone through that I’ve recognized it internally and just sort of moved on. This was the first time I really reflected on what it was I was feeling. I don’t know if it was just because Jordan is dead or because there was so much content or what, but when I got to the end there was a much more distinct finality than most of the times I’ve felt this way. I realized that I would never enter this world he’d created again. I’d never share time with the characters, never find out what will happen to them next, albeit usually something terrible and scarring, or how they’ll respond. This was is it.
I realized that the feeling this was most like was mourning. Not the crippling sorrow that comes with the passing of someone you were really close to. It certainly wasn’t that kind of devastation. But it reminded me a lot of people I knew earlier and my life and maybe lost touch with who passed years later. You have that same regret that you’ll never share anything new with them. The feeling of something that you cared about and know that it’s gone now.
It was a hard thing to wrap my mind around. My first reaction is to push it down, like it’s an insult to the very real people and the feeling of loss when they pass from your life. What I had to really make myself understand was how deeply these works of fiction or television or whatever connect to us. We share these worlds, these characters lives. Their emotions, their trials, everything that happens within them affects us in a tangible way. I think that maybe sometimes we discount how powerful these mediums are. Empathy is a gift unique in humans. We can connect with experiences that aren’t our own. Relate to and care about people that aren’t real.
Sometimes the things humans can do is overwhelmingly powerful, and it’s a wonder that I spent so many years taking it for granted.
