Life is like the five paragraph essay that I teach in class. I tell my students that their audience will always remember the introduction and the conclusion, so they need to start off strongly and end their essay just as powerfully. And like life, you will be remembered most by how you came into this world and how you leave it.
The introduction is birth: people will remember how you hooked them with your cuteness, your baby feet, and your little fingers. Everyone will start to make plans and dream big things for you. Their goal and their hope is that your life will be free of troubles and imperfections. You didn't define how or what your life would be like. Instead, other people have defined it for you.
The three body paragraphs are benchmarks of life: childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. They are the parts of your life that you struggle with--the construction of your foundation and beliefs, the development of your identity, the improvement and expansion of your independence. Nothing will be perfect as you try to organize these parts of your life. As you rewrite your paragraphs, you keep asking yourself about your goals. Are you struggling to support your own thesis or someone else's? Whatever you decide, this section is where most of the revision takes place. You're never sure if you got it down or not.
Then there is the conclusion. Everyone fumbles over the conclusion. Do we summarize everything we already mentioned in the essay? Do we repeat our main points? How do we close and end gracefully and thoughtfully? What do we want our audience to remember most? What do we want our loved ones to remember of us? The conclusion is accidental, like most of life itself. Sometimes we can end that essay with grace and wit, and everyone will remember the perfection of it that they will forget the errors of your life and forgive you for your faults. But death is unexpected, so that concluding paragraph does not always come out as you had planned. The conclusion's short and abrupt ending does not give the audience the closure that they seek, so it leaves them confused and puzzled.
As they search for answers, they will reread the conclusion and maybe the entire essay all over again, combing over the stages of your life and criticizing your imperfections. They will ask themselves, "What was the thesis in the first place?" and then reread the introduction. They will realize that you never really had one... not your own, anyway.
A conclusion that doesn't give closure, body paragraphs that are not organized, and an introduction that never defines who you are make a weak essay. And that's all you will be remembered for. The conclusion can be that exclamation point that gets everyone to applaud and leave the auditorium with echoes of your accolades, or it can be the ellipsis that confuses everyone to silently boo you off the stage with their disappointment.
No matter how hard you tried or worked on your essay, that conclusion will be the defining paragraph that sings your praises or negates your life.
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