Closure Is a Myth
Moving forward without resolution, understanding, or apology
The last conversation you had with your brother was an argument about something neither of you can remember now. He died three weeks later in an accident that gave neither of you time to fix anything. No reconciliation. No final understanding. No chance to say what needed to be said.
You keep replaying that argument, searching for the moment where you could have chosen differently. You imagine the conversation you would have had if you’d known it was the last one. You construct elaborate scenarios where he apologizes, where you apologize, where both of you finally understand each other and the tension that defined your relationship dissolves into clarity.
These imagined conversations feel necessary. Like if you can just figure out what should have been said, you can somehow retroactively complete the relationship. Like understanding why things went wrong will allow you to file the experience away in some organized mental cabinet labeled “resolved” and move on with your life.
But that conversation will never happen. That understanding will never arrive. The relationship ended mid-sentence, and no amount of analysis will add a period to that hanging clause.
This is the reality most of us spend enormous energy avoiding: some stories don’t have endings. Some conflicts don’t get resolved. Some relationships don’t achieve understanding before they terminate. Some people who harmed you will never acknowledge what they did. Some questions about why things happened the way they happened will never be answered.
We’ve been sold a therapeutic fiction that healing requires closure. That you can’t move forward until you have resolution. That emotional health depends on achieving understanding about past events and receiving acknowledgment from people who hurt you.
This fiction keeps people trapped for decades, waiting for something that isn’t coming so they can finally begin the life they’ve put on hold until they receive it.
What if closure isn’t something that happens to you? What if it’s something you construct internally, regardless of whether external circumstances provide resolution?
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The ancient Stoics lived in a world where closure was rare. People disappeared into slavery or exile without goodbye. Loved ones died suddenly from plague or violence. Political allies became enemies without explanation. Betrayals went unacknowledged. Injustices remained unanswered.
Yet Stoic philosophy doesn’t include a chapter on achieving closure. There’s no technique for getting the apology you need or the understanding you deserve. Instead, there’s a relentless focus on how to live well when circumstances don’t provide what you need from them.
Chrysippus argued that we suffer not from events themselves but from our judgments about what events should include. When you insist that you need closure to move forward, you’re not describing a psychological requirement. You’re describing a preference you’ve elevated to a necessity.
The difference matters enormously. A preference you can work around. A necessity stops you completely.