The Illusion of Endings
We are taught to crave conclusions. From childhood fairytales to adult heartbreaks, we are conditioned to believe that every story should have a proper end, and they should be tied together with logic and comfort. However, that is not how life works. There are half-open doors, some conversations that never find their last sentence, and some people become memories who did not say goodbye. The concept of closure promises peace - one last moment when all the pain aligns into understanding, but in reality, closure is a myth that we tell ourselves to feel in control. Life, love, and loss can hardly be resolved; they merely change. And maybe, the stories that never end are the ones that shape us the most.
The Obsession with Resolution
Our culture glorifies resolution. Movies fade to black after a happy ending, self-help books end with healing, and even grief has a timeline. We admire people who “ moved on”, as though forgetting were a badge of courage. However, this obsession with closure often silences the truth: some wounds are meant to be carried, not cured. When emotions are assumed to be linear, it is a closure. You do not grow out of love, nor do you wipe out loss. You just learn to co-exist with them. The incomplete chapters, the unfinished feelings, the words not said, these are not the marks of weakness; it is the marks of humanity. In a world desperate for conclusions, learning to live with questions becomes its own quiet kind of wisdom.
Unfinished Stories and the Beauty of Continuance
Not all stories are meant to conclude; some are meant to continue quietly inside us. There are people you will never meet again, yet you still think of them when certain songs are played or when the air smells like a season they belonged to. Their presence lingers not as ghosts, but as gentle proof that connection does not depend on permanence. Sometimes, the ending never arrives because the story wasn’t about completion; it was about transformation. We evolve not when we erase what hurt us, but when we integrate it into who we’ve become. The myth of closure instructs us to move the page; the true development will enable us to continue reading the same line until we are no longer shattered by it.
The Weight of Acceptance
It is painful and liberating to realise that not everything will come to an end. It is important to know that closure is not the external process, but the internal process: the silent choice no longer to ask people who cannot give you the answers. Indifference is not acceptance. It is the realisation that longing, regret, and love may co-exist with peace. You may lose a person and remain complete. You may be unresolved and in the process of healing. The
complexity of life does not require simplification to make it meaningful. Once you cease to insist on endings, you begin to perceive continuity, how all the losses, all the incomplete stories, continue to nourish your becoming.
Letting the Story Live
Perhaps closure is overestimated since it presupposes that stories are meant to die when we have learned the lesson. But what should happen is that some of these stories are to endure eternally shifting form with us? Suppose that memories are not encumbrances, but tracts to our most human side? To allow a story to live does not mean to be in the past, but to be respectful of its role in your present. This myth of closure collapses once we understand that endings are not the only way to peace. Peace is sometimes as mere a matter of making room for what has not been resolved yet - and discovering the beauty of its continuation.
The Grace of the Unfinished
Not all stories end. Others simply melt into the beat of everyday life and reappear in silent situations when you are least expecting them. That isn’t failure; it’s life. Closure does not mean forgetting; it means taking the story in a new direction. The closure myth suggests a fresh start, but the actual healing process is gradual assimilation. It is learning to live with what remains, to live with what can not be explained, to discover tenderness even in the unfinished. Some stories ought not to end, as they remind us that being human is not about completing but about going on. And perhaps, it is the most sincere form of closure that there is.