The Importance of Closure – 1

The easiest thing to do in life is to put labels on things and call them names and the hardest is to make things better. When we look back and retrospect there are a lot of things that we wish we had done and a lot of them that we wish we hadn’t. I for example, ended up being a technology student. But when I set out, I wanted to be a journalist, an author and a media personality. Nothing stayed except for the freethinker in me, It hasn’t ditched me yet. It’s important to understand what is “feasible” and what isn’t and for what reasons it is or it isn’t. And, it’s also very essential to have a closure on things that we think we wouldn’t pursue or have; be it a career, be it a choice or be it a relationship.

All though, we make “rational” choices in life, many of us don’t really seem to understand what rationality really is. Rationality is not an abstract concept, neither is it imaginary nor complex. It’s fairly simple. Life teaches us and the lessons we learn at every point in life would make a person out of us. It might sound a tad bit arrogant but we wouldn’t be what we are today if it were not for our past. That’s exactly what guides us, motivates us and shows us a way forward – our past combined with our intellect. The very art of rationality stems from this very thing. Yes, it is in fact. It’s not science, it’s always been and will always be an art. My notion is that all of us were born with the same level of intellect and all of us are of course gifted. The difference in levels is due to the past, the experiences in life and the motivation. If our life’s always been open ended, there’s no way we’re going to move forward. There has to be a closure for everything, a closure which we have to realize and take it in our stride.

When we set out to do something, we start to associate ourselves with it. That’s what I define as a relationship. The concept of relationship is just not textbook love/marriage/lust. It’s lot more than that and a lot refined. When we seek someone or [to be] something, we inherently set out some ground rules for ourselves about how to act and how not to. When we end up not getting it, do we have to break free from those ground rules that we once laid for ourselves and retain our identity? Or do we have to keep cribbing about it, till we feel we’re done? or do we have to loosely hold on it, hoping things would fall in place at some point and wishing we get a second chance? These questions are rather emotional than philosophical or meta-physical. It’s not important to answer these, but it’s very important to get a perspective or sometimes offer a perspective to someone who needs it.

By closure I don’t mean covering the wound to stop bleeding. I beg to disagree with that notion of closure. I agree that, when confronted with an unsatisfactory situation, one must move on. However, doing so is often, in real life, a matter of accepting the existence of loose ends. The notion of “closure” that’s mostly used (or misused?) of late, seems to me to be akin to the notion that life should be like a story, with oneself as the protagonist. Stories are useful, but they aren’t a good model for all of life. The cult of “closure” often manifests itself as an utterly self-centered demand for attention and gratification from others. Among the most dedicated seekers of closure are all the stalking exes and revenge-bent gangsters (whether inner-city or international) destroying everyone’s peace because they demand that the world stop to serve their desires.

What I mean by closure is to understand that life is not a great “individual” story and you wouldn’t have a stop gate to everything. We have to understand at some point that if we can’t have someone/something that we have (or thought) had before and if we have to let that stuff go by, we have got to accept it and move on. Introspection will help us to not make the same mistake [if we did make any] when confronted with the similar situation again. Looking forward is the correct expression here. We have gotta find closures by ourselves. It’s not every time that the world around us offers closures. More often that not, it doesn’t. People don’t choose to end things, they always love to have a back up or may for emotional reasons, they don’t. Whatever it is, it doesn’t do any good to hold on to something when we know that we are not supposed to. The kind of closures we should look for must be metaphorical yet practical. I know it sounds confusing, but if life were to be easy, we would all be screwing it, instead of it screwing us.

Well, what about emotional closures then? Where and how we find a closure on something when we thought we had it but we haven’t really? Whose fault is it? Is it our imagination that led us to where and what we are? Have we been too optimistic about life? How do we come out of our fantasies to live a good life, if not a fairy tale? I’m gonna reserve my take on this for the next post.

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