What was it about How I Met Your Mother that made you feel you were on an emotional roller coaster? That every pain a character went through was your pain? That every legendary moment was experienced by the five characters on screen and you on the couch? That made you feel that you were the two kids listening to the nine year story of how your father met your mother?
It's been three weeks since the series finale of How I Met Your Mother. Some people still want to throw a chair at the TV screen from the most heartbreaking ending ever and possibly the most perfect ending that ever came to be.
I know some people would have wanted the show to end with the mother calling from the other room saying dinner was ready, but would that have been realistic? There aren't many shows out there that capture the depth of real life. Most TV shows give us a false pretense of how life should be. If life was really suppose to end up with the girl and guy living happily ever after, why doesn't it happen to everyone? Don't get me wrong. It's out there, but if you're being truthful to yourself, it doesn't always end up that way. In life, friends leave and break promises. It's bound to happen. There's a no escaping it. Life just happens sometimes. Then there are those times were we get a second chance, just like Ted got one to live life with someone he loved. Sometimes we get hit. Sometimes we get missed.
Ted took a eight year journey to find the mother of his children and so did we. That's exactly why we are upset. When Ted feel in love with Tracy, we did too. When Robin left the gang, she left us too. When Marshall and Lily moved out of the apartment, we were saying the goodbyes with them. When Barney became a dad, we shared the experience with him. When the mother died, we cried too. Why? Because How I Met Your Mother took you along the same experiences that the gang did. We learned right along with the gang.
Now everyone knows that when it's after 2 AM, you should just go home. Now we all know that love can never be a forgotten, because Ted taught us that through a few simple words. "Actually, there is a word for that. It's love. I'm in love with her, okay? If you're looking for the word that means caring for someone beyond all rationality and wanting them to have everything they want no matter how much it destroys you, its love! And when you love someone y-you just don't stop. Ever. Even when people roll their eyes or call you crazy. Even then. Especially then. You just- you don't give up because if I could give up... If I could just, you know, take the whole world's advice and- and move on and find someone else, that wouldn't be love. That would be... That would be some other disposable thing that is not worth fighting for. But that is not what this is." Now we know exactly what love feels like through the wise words of our buddy Klaus. "Lebenslangen schicksals schatz is not something that develops over time. It is something that happens instantaneously. It courses through you like the water of a river after a storm, filling you and emptying you all at once. You feel it throughout your body, in your hands, in your heart, in your stomach, in your skin." Now we know the best bet to make is the slap bet. Now we know that we should always keep the ones we love the most close to us, because no one knew that better than Ted. "You will be shocked when you discover how easy it is in life to part ways with people forever. That's why when you find someone you want to keep around, you do something about it." And now we know that no matter how much we try, love will never make sense, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't do it.
There will always be a piece of us that is never filled, because we lost the mother just like Ted did. How I Met Your Mother taught us the greatest lesson we will ever learn. That's why it's the greatest show. Go back to season 8, episode 20, "The Time Travelers". Future Ted says if he could do anything that day, he would go get those extra 45 days with Tracy. Why? Because time is short, and tomorrow is never guaranteed. When you love someone, spend ever waking minute with them, because you'll never know when those you love will be gone forever.
If you had to be honest, the way How I Met Your Mother ended was intended for us to learn that lesson. Now, go use that lesson wisely or The Mother would have died for nothing.
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