The Joy of Closure

Finally, vot­ing day has arrived. There is promise of clo­sure. For sev­eral weeks now, I have heard peo­ple say that all they want is for this thing to be over. Liv­ing in the ten­sion of not know­ing one way or another is dif­fi­cult. Social and per­sonal fatigue takes its toll. The polar­iz­ing will not end, but at least you know which per­son will carry the sym­bolic polit­i­cal torch for a while.
Per­son­ally, I really liked col­lege (which I guess is why I still dab­ble in it some as a teacher). Col­lege has clo­sure. Each semes­ter begins and ends. It has new sub­jects that even­tu­ally end in a grade. The stress may be intense for a while, but it ends after a few months. I learned that I could endure even the most dif­fi­cult courses, know­ing that sooner or later I would hand in the final exams or papers and walk away in eupho­ria. It is a lot like exer­cis­ing — mis­ery fol­lowed by the twin sen­sa­tions of accom­plish­ment and sat­is­fac­tion. You wake up the next morn­ing in the brief nir­vana of know­ing there is noth­ing due. After a few weeks, the process begins again. Each semes­ter becomes its own won­der­ful roller­coaster. Most of all, it begins and ends!
Clo­sure is a tem­po­rary sen­sa­tion. Life really has no stop­ping point. Most of the reli­gious world believes that life does not end at the grave. Ceme­ter­ies are for the liv­ing. They are there to remind us of chap­ters in our own book of life. It is the peo­ple that walk away after the funeral cer­e­mony that need the head­stones. Those that have gone on have no need of such items.
Each day ends in sleep, but opens the door to dreams that end in wak­ing. Clo­sure? Not exactly. Just tran­si­tion.
Tomor­row the coun­try will still be divided. Few will dis­cover how to step aside from the imag­i­nary dualisms of our times. Most will feel a tem­po­rary sigh. Some will feel vic­to­ri­ous. Oth­ers will feel defeated. Nei­ther grasps the big­ger pic­ture that life is eter­nal, that self-definition need not cre­ate exclu­siv­i­ties, and that no one really wins in these “either/or” social and polit­i­cal wars. True Spirit is One.