No Closure Required

Sometimes, the hardest things to make peace with are not the things we never had reason to expect, but the things that seemed so certain until they were not.

A few years ago, I gained admission to study abroad and applied for a visa. I had a scholarship, and my interview appointment was expedited. By then, I had already been added to the school’s WhatsApp group for international students, where I met someone I grew quite close to. We started dating, lol, and, like people who believe their plans are finally coming together, we were certain that in a matter of months, we would be holding hands in person.

Interestingly, we both had dreams that seemed to reinforce that expectation. On the day of my visa interview, he had dreamt that we were holding hands as we walked along a beach. I, on the other hand, had dreamt of the date of my interview long before I booked the appointment. Looking back, it felt as though the pieces were falling into place in a way that was difficult to dismiss. What more reason did we need to believe that things were going to work out?

***Then my visa was denied***

Just like that, the future we had spent months imagining became uncertain. The relationship gradually fizzled out because the possibility of meeting in person seemed increasingly impossible. Life moved on, as it does. It has been over four years, and we have both moved on with our lives.

Yet, I often find myself returning to that period, not because I am still waiting for the relationship to happen, but because I have never quite understood what to make of the experience.

Why the admission? Why the scholarship? Why the expedited appointment? Why those dreams that seemed to point towards the same outcome? If things were not going to happen as we had imagined, why did so much seem to suggest that they would?

I know that dreams do not guarantee outcomes, and that our interpretation of events can be influenced by what we hope for. Perhaps, with enough distance, we can look back and recognise that some of the signs we thought were confirmations were simply things we did not yet know how to interpret. But even knowing this does not completely answer the question. It only gives me another way to look at it.

We often speak about life unfolding according to a plan, about divine timing, and about how things make sense when we look back. Sometimes, they do. We eventually understand why a door closed, why an opportunity failed to materialise, or why a particular experience took us somewhere we had not considered. At other times, the explanation never comes. We are left with the experience, the questions it raised and the possibility that we may never know what it all meant.

I wonder whether part of our difficulty with unfulfilment comes from the belief that everything must eventually lead to the outcome we desire. When several things appear to align, we begin to see a promise in them. We assume that because a path has opened, it must lead to where we expect. When it does not, we are left trying to reconcile what happened with the idea we nursed in our minds.

I may never know why things unfolded the way they did. I may understand it differently years from now, or I may never find an explanation that satisfies me. For now, I have made peace with not knowing. I guess that, too, is a form of acceptance: learning that not every unanswered question must become an unfinished chapter in our lives.

I have a question though.

Can we accept that an experience mattered without ever discovering why it happened?