The End Is Better Than the Beginning

As King Solomon wrote in the Book of Ecclesiastes: “The end of a thing is better than its beginning; patience is better than pride.” Opening Many young married men live with a certain pressure. It is quiet, but it is real. It is the feeling that you have to come up with something new. You have to bring an idea that nobody had before. You have to be the “first” at something. And if you don’t invent anything, if you “only” continue what others did before you, is there any real worth in that? Against this stands a puzzling verse. King Solomon says it plainly: “There is nothing new under the sun.” At first glance this verse sounds hopeless. If nothing is new, what is our job in the world? Why make the effort at all? But King Solomon himself gives us the key, a few chapters later: “The end of a thing is better than its beginning.” These two verses do not contradict each other. They hold each other up. Building on Top of Building When King Solomon says “There is nothing new under the sun,” he is not giving up hope. He is describing how the world really works. The world moves forward like a building rising on top of a building. Each generation adds another layer to what came before it. Take a simple example. The person who invented the engine took a giant step. The person who built the car used that same foundation. And the person who brought the car to its finished form did not have to reinvent the wheel. He started from a higher point. Because of that, he could reach a higher place. “There is nothing new under the sun” does not mean the world stands still. It means the way forward goes through what has already been laid down. The first inventor has to get past every obstacle. He knocks on every wall and feels his way in the dark, just to reach the starting point. The one who comes after him starts from that very point, and he can go much further. This is the meaning of “The end of a thing is better than its beginning.” The end is the completion, the finish, the purpose. It stands higher than the raw beginning. The one who started first is not necessarily the greatest. The greatest is the one who brings the thing to completion. The Lesson for Serving Hashem If this is true of things in the everyday world, it is even more true in serving Hashem. Ask yourself: is our job to invent a new way to serve Hashem? Each of the great Hasidic masters who led our people built on the one before him. Each one revealed one more layer of what had been hidden, and brought that revelation to a higher completion for his own generation. The Baal Shem Tov, founder of the Hasidic movement, laid the foundation: the inner dimension of the Torah began to flow like a spring. Each of the masters after him widened the riverbed of that spring. There is something here worth pausing on. Jewish law has a well-known rule: “The law follows the later authorities.” The last authority to rule, the one who built on everyone before him, has the deciding word. This is not because he is naturally wiser. It is because he stands on the shoulders of everyone who came before him, and so he sees further. The same is true of our generation. A great Hasidic master explains that the seventh generation, a generation that is entirely “seventh,” does not stand lower because it is not the “first.” Just the opposite: it stands on everything that was built before it. Its job is not to invent. Its job is to complete. It is to set the last stone in a building that has been rising through all the generations. “The end of a thing is better than its beginning.” The last stone is the one that completes the building. Without it, everything built before is not yet a house. Closing Make no mistake, dear friend. You are not “only” continuing. You are the one who completes. There is a deep difference between the two. The one who continues just adds one more thing. The one who completes gives purpose and wholeness to everything that came before. All the work of our great masters, every revelation of the Torah’s inner dimension, all the generations of preparation, are waiting for the end. They are waiting for the finish, for the completion our generation is meant to bring. That is why “the end of a thing is better than its beginning.” It is not less good. It is better. It is greater. It is deeper. The end is the purpose, and the purpose is the greatest of all.