The thing you need to know about stories is that they have no beginnings and they have no endings, not really. Nobody lives happily ever after, nobody was a blank slate before their moment of initiation, and it's always a little more complicated than what can be written down or drawn or told around a campfire.  

 

And yet, there's story and there's Story, see? And if story is complicated, Story still has its rules, and one of those rules is that it reaches a point of conclusion. It ends. Knowing that rule is important, because the Universe, sometimes, arranges convenient moments for us where an outsider might cringe, nod in sympathy, and close the book pensively, or (perhaps more rarely) let out an involuntary noise of satisfied envy, smile, and do the same. Points where the Story may end, the conversation round the fire may turn to other matters, the book may be put back on the shelf for a later date.  

 

Now, it's good to keep an eye out for those moments in your own life, those Story moments in your story, if you will. They're harder to notice than you might imagine, because stories are full of context that Stories lack. The gathering of loved ones happens after a week of cleaning and errands. The perfect rainbow comes after the storm that had you worrying about a flood. Your knee hurts a little, always, for no particular reason. But if you can get the knack of it, you'll start to find them, and you can perhaps appreciate their beauty a little bit more than you would already, feel a little of the reflected satisfaction of a Storyteller, -reader, or -listener in the small moments of your own life.  

And if that's a good moment for a Story to end, well, you're just a breath from a beginning, too, aren't you?