you have to know the end.

so here i am. home from work and i came home and flipped the tv on to look for weather. because there is a storm coming. and in my search for weather because honestly, i know the channel for Comedy Central so i can watch jon stewart and steve colbert and i know the home and garden channel, but that's it. so somehow for a brief moment i landed on "the talk." you know- all those women celebrities that sit around and talk about stuff. just like they know a lot about stuff. probably not something i'd ever watch again, but the topic of the moment stopped me.

they were posing the question of whether or not long distance relationships could last. and most of the cw came down on the side of "no." but then one of them (and i've got no idea who she was because i don't know my celebrities, it seems) said "yes, they can."

which started the argument. but then they came to the consensus that they can, but you have to have the end in sight. you have to agree on what's going to happen and know that you'll be together in the end. because otherwise it's too hard.

hmm. i thought. huh. i thought. yep. i thought.

and it occurs to me that in addition to this being true for relationships, it's true for all tough times. and for pain. it's only tolerable WHEN you know that it's going to end.

my daughter told me that during the huge earthquake in japan, the worst part of it was that it seemed to go on and on. and you didn't know when it was going to stop.

when you have a baby, it's pretty painful, but it becomes tolerable because you know it's going to end. plus you get a prize.

when you are depressed or heartbroken, it's hard to deal with those things, because those things seem like they will have no end. it's not surprising to me that sometimes people jump ship.

but that leads us up to the question of hope. can hope carry a person through, when he or she doesn't have certainty? and run just on hope? i don't really think so. i think you really have to know the end good or bad, because the uncertainty will just about kill you. slowly. it will eat you up. you have to know the end.

so now that i've had my ponderous thought for the day, i need to find the weather channel. to see when this storm is going to end.