A "Final Draft" of Who We Are

In high school, our art teacher told us that our work was never really finished, we just stopped at interesting points. I think this echoes to many other fields. Stories ending with some self-realization or happy ending are still cliff hangers, leaving these fictional peoples with lives to live off the page. There is always more to the story in a newspaper or magazine - a back story, plans for the future, the opinions of those not interviewed. We, like the oil paint on our canvas, the characters in our books, or the subjects of our articles, are works in progress, never done, just pausing at interesting times. We are students today, professionals in years to come, later to be parents, grandparents, retirees on cruises or paying with change for our ice cream cones. We are always developing characters, full of depth and life, and there is no "final draft" until death.