Wikipedia¹ is quite terse, and I had a long look an nLab's treasure², both not very satisfying. But with your motivational suggestions it almost seems I might make some sense of some of it. Thanks for sharing!
¹: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/End_%28category_theory%29
²: https://ncatlab.org/nlab/show/end
Bartosz Milewski (npub1glg…tqzy) Dan Piponi (npub1x78…xn0m) Matt Carr (npub1ftf…yj4s)