It’s been over an hour since the end credits rolled for the series finale of Ted Lasso and I’m still sitting here, staring at a paused video stream, not ready to move on. It’s like reading the final line of a really good book and closing its pages for the last time. I don’t feel ready to rejoin the real world.
Ariana, who watched this final episode with me, asked if I was OK. I tell her, “yeah, but I don’t wanna leave this state just yet.” So dramatic, I know. But it’s real. The show, which had been there for me through really tough times, is now over.
“Part of the journey is the end.”
Just yesterday, my Boston Celtics experienced an ending of their own, but one of the disappointing sort. On the verge of an unprecedented comeback from being down 0-3 against the Miami Heat, they lose by almost 20 points in a game 7 at their home court after tying the series 3-3. Just like that, season over. Championship hopes, erased.
I spent most of yesterday in an awful mood. I was not pleasant company, to say the least. I felt like, as fans, we deserved better than that. I’m sure the team felt the same way. As much as I knew that I had to get over the feeling and move on with my own life, just like my current state, I simply didn’t want to leave that feeling. Not yet. Maybe it was me being in denial. Maybe I just needed time for it to sink in.
I’m realizing that these extreme states of loss and of feeling lost seem to have some addictive quality to them. I think of the times I’ve been angry and how tempting it is to stay angry. The same is true when I’m down. It feels safe to spiral even lower, even when I know, that’s not the direction I should be going.
And now, the mood is different. Equally emotional as yesterday, but in a different way. It’s that “what now?” feeling when you have just finished a show and you’re unsure how to go about your life without it.
I’m trying to make sense of how emotionally demanding the past two days have been. “It’s just a show,” I hear voices comment. “It’s just a game,” they continue. I know. And that’s the crazy part. In the grand scheme of things, that’s all they are, a sitcom and a basketball team. “Very un-Stoic of me to let endings get the better of me,” I think to myself.
But I love it. I love the show and what it means to the people who relate to the internal struggles of its characters. I think it’s such an important show and we’re lucky that it exists. I love the Celtics despite their inability to finish games and being the most frustrating team to watch.
We’re often warned to not get too high and not get too low, and I understand the wisdom in this. But there are moments when the emotional roller coaster is part of the experience. The drop after the climax, the rush following the calm, the sudden halt at the very end. These are the stuff of being alive.
“It’s funny to think about the things in your life that can make you cry just knowing that they existed, can then become the same thing that makes you cry knowing that they’re now gone,” said Ted Lasso in Season 2, Episode 1, “I think those things come into our lives to help us get from one place to a better one.”
Maybe endings are the price we pay for being all-in on something. To be able to commit to something and feel the ups and downs along with it, that takes courage and it’s a privilege to be able to experience it.
The end is part of the deal.
It seems to me, although these types of endings are often painful, they’re necessary. Perhaps we need endings because we need what comes after them—space. When things—and people—leave our lives, we gain space in our minds and hearts, space for new things, space to move on, space to process detachment, space to create, space to let go, space to remember, space for acceptance, space to know ourselves better.
Sometimes, we get a Ted Lasso ending—a satisfying closure you hope would go on forever. Other times, we get a 2023 Boston Celtics ending—a disappointing but unsurprising scene you can’t bear to watch more of. We don’t always get to choose, but we bear them just the same. And we gain the same space just the same.