I woke up playing with our word “end” the way Henry plays with his hard rubber Kong toy, bouncing it every which way. (If only I could write a missive as entertaining as a Kong toy!)

This happens to me, always has, but more in retirement when my thoughts aren’t pre-empted by duty. When you work you’ve got to think about your work – that is both a practical and moral obligation. The more complex the job the more it commandeers attention, waking or sleeping. These days all I have to think about (as opposed to, have to think about) are tomorrow’s menu (for I’m cook in this galley) and the occasional scheduled event (dentist, haircut, lunch with a pal, etc.). My mind, when I close my eyes, gets to meander where it may. (I no longer have to think about puppy Henry, for he’s gotten clever at securing the regard he requires – a quite remarkable intellectual development – worthy a missive – maybe from Henry – for another day.) It interests me what my dreaming mind chooses to ponder. Sometimes its concerns are predictable (a diagnosis; Trump); at other times it perambulates a lost past or starts goofing around with a word, as now.

End is a complicated word, endlessly complicated, even before one gets to etymology, where complexity compounds. Consider this famous line of poetry by T.S. Eliot: “In my end is my beginning.” End here connotes both termination (the end of my time) and purpose (to what end?). Any end is a beginning, obviously, for time is continuous, but aren’t end and beginning opposites? Gives me vertigo – and that’s just six little words.

Our word end is very old, drifting from Old German, the ages we call Middle, like a volcanic vapor from the deep mists of time. It’s cognate somehow with “and,” both suggesting conjunction, a bumping into. An end is both where you end up and where you meant to. One can say, with equal justice, “Freedom is the end of democracy” and “Tyranny is the end of democracy” – a resonant contrast nowadays.

I wonder, What is my end? Mine, as an individual – and an inhabitant of my specifics – and a sample of the genus homo, presumably typical. Younger, I thought of myself only in the first of these three categories, which was very stressful. As an individual, competing with billions of rivals for acclaim, present, past, and future, yikes, I’d already lost my race before starting! No wonder folks needed God for consolation! As the actor in my little history, I was amusing to behold, my story worth hearing, however it turned out. As an ingenious bipedal ape, I mattered not at all – and mattered immensely – as a participant in the endless adventure of being. My significance depended on my perspective, which is nice to know, since it’s a lot easier to change your mind than your facts.

My end is soon – so say my facts: in a year or score of years – not much longer, I hope – decrepitude and loneliness entice me not. But that is not my end! My end, my purpose, is what I’m doing now – so I believe – shaping words for friends – and maybe this end will prove a beginning (one can always hope). But that is not my end either – to be remembered – for we all vanish – even Shakespeare eventually – yet my participation in my species’ adventure will persist to infinity! “In so far as the mind sees things in their eternal aspect,” said Spinoza, “it participates in eternity.”

So there you have it, the end of our stroll – and its end.