Happy Endings and Atul Gawande

At the moment I'm between writing projects--or rather I'm trying to decide which direction to go in.  One possibility is a longish short story to be called "Happy Endings:" I don't know anything more about than the title, but I like it a lot.

At the same time, a book group I belong to has just read Atul Gawande's latest, Being Mortal.   It's an essay about how we deal with the end of life now.  A surgeon, writer, and public health researcher, Gawande is thought-provoking and extremely readable.

This last quality comes in part because he's thought a lot about the story that each of writes in our own lives.  He writes:

"For human beings, life is meaningful becaue it is  story.  a story has a sense of a whole, and its arc is determined by the significant moments, the ones where something happens...

"A semingly happy life may be empty. A seemingly difficult life may be devoted ot a great cause. ...Unlike your experiencing self--which is absorbed in the moment--you remembering self is attempting recognize not only the peaks of joy an the valley sof misery but also how the story works out as a whole.  That is profoundly affectedby how things ultimately turn out.  Why would a fooball fan let a few flubbed minutes at the end of the game ruin three hours of bliss? Because a football game is a story. 

" And in stories, endings matter."

Worth thinking about, whether you're contemplating your life or those of others.