Something I hate but love about both series, is how they end. Has me crying for a spell, but they are wonderful endings if you think about it. Oddly enough, they follow in with the same sort of ending as Animorphs(my favorite book series-so what it's a young adult book, I'm still a kid at heart ).
Why do I love them, and how can I hate it at once? Because there isn't an end. But isn't that how life is? You don't have a true conclusion?
Buffy ends with a huge battle, and then at the end the cast agrees that they will continue the good fight. Angel (which I finally finished today-yeah been over with for a while and NOW I finish the series) ends with a huge battle scene against thousands of demons, and a dragon (:) ). Animorphs ends with the two opposing forces battling one another in a couple of spaceships. In every ending, it carries on with the sole theme: We never stop fighting.
"Only the dead have seen the end of war." -George Santayana, "Soliloquies in England"
Perhaps, or perhaps it's just that they've seen the end of war on this plane-it depends upon your beliefs on the afterlife. Stories like Angel, Buffy, or Animorphs can leave you with a number of different emotions about things that happen in our lives, just watch the shows and see what the same negative element is:
"It doesn't matter anymore." "If this stuff is going to continue to go on, why do we even keep fighting?" "What's the point, world peace will never be achieved." "I've lost everything, everyone, it's so simple to just not care." "Everything should be eradicated."
Yet the show continues, the characters continue to press on(Buffy: The Vampire Slayer carries onto another act in her comics for that matter! ). Why?
Because of our humanity, or in the case of some demons that play on the show-for the love of others and the fight for all that is good. We have to be able to give others the chance for a happy life-sometimes at the expense of our own happiness. We press on for eachother and for the future-giving them a reason to continue to fight, to understand why we fight so hard to make their lives as meaningful as possible.
Not talking about a battle of heaven vs. hell here. I'm talking about helping one another in life-in whatever form that comes. Might be helping that old guy that got run over by a truck, and his life is still hanging in the balance. Or helping the young teenage woman find a reason to not commit suicide. All the small things that we may or may not believe is going to do us any good, but looking at the bigger picture your life is meant to touch, it can go miles.
Although this post sounds a lot like something that sprang up from watching a series finale of Angel, oddly the watching of that episode came after I read an article in Stars and Stripes. It talks about Iraq and the concerns of our soldiers after we pull out of Iraqi cities (which is suppose to be by 30 June of this year). One man, Brad Blauser, is sort of a champion to kids in Iraq-particularly disabled kids. He fought as hard as he could to help these children get wheelchairs. During his last distribution(32 wheelchairs)-in Fadhil, Iraq- he had ran into a small problem.
"When Blauser began fitting the first child, he realized that the wheelchair was missing the custom-made tool that allows parents to adjust the chair as the child grows. He soon discovered that all the chairs were missing the critical part. The US officer in charge of the event called all the Iraqi soldiers and questioned them. Minutes later, the Iraqis walked in with 11 of the 32 tools. They had no explanation for the fate of the rest or for a wheelchair that didn't deliver." (http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/launch.aspx?pnum=4&eid=04c74266-dc8d-41fa-b3bf-15ee28fe5f64)
Americans have this really bad rap for getting caught up in things that are beyond our control-and we don't really look to help ourselves. Does it matter who we help in the end? The best stories, are the ones that take on the battle to find a way to help improve other peoples lives. It's not about where we fight the battle, it's about how we fight it. Do we infiltrate the enemy and take it out from within? Or do we help the smaller picture? Take the opportunities you have, walk into them with full determination to make the world a better place, always keep that uppermost in your mind.
When you let power get the better of you, then you become lost to the cause. If taking on the really small battles is all you can handle without power getting to your brain, then only take on the smaller wins (saving a cat in the road for a little girl, helping someone out of a difficult situation). If you are able to handle more, the calling will come (putting a serial killer in jail, running a country). But never forget who you are, and why you are doing what you are doing.