Everybody has unfinished business in one shape or another — a project at work or in school, a conversation left unsaid, a friendship left in what-ifs, a book left with blank pages, or a dream that hadn’t been completely pursued. While my childhood was blissfully free of this awareness, I think the weight of this absence of closure really starts making itself known when you become a teenager. This may be because at this stage in your life, each moment is another brick laid on top of the foundation of your life: you’re growing ever more aware of what emotional connections you’re forging, and solidifying. Maybe it is because when you’re younger, things feel more intense, pixelated, and daunting — more triggering. But reflecting on this past spring, I’ve begun to realize how harmful holding onto unfinished business can be.
A textbook example of something left unfinished is relationships that have “fizzled out.” Especially at Andover, where everyone lives in close proximity, friendships are made and strengthened quickly due to the sheer amount of time we spend with one another. But as quickly as friendships or other relationships can form, some do not last in the long term. When those bonds fray — or just quietly dissolve — what gets left behind often isn’t even fury or sorrow, but musings on what went wrong. Could I have said something differently? Should I have reached out one more time? Such questions linger within you, trailing behind you in your classes.
This spring, I’ve done a lot of thinking about what it’d be like if we could simply forget all the relationships that fizzled out. There’s a special kind of pain that comes with remembering people who were once such a big part of your life — and now, aren’t. Not because something dramatic happened, not because of a fight or a clear ending, but because things just… faded. Maybe you stopped trying. Maybe they did. Maybe life just kept moving, and you both stopped showing up in each other’s stories. The real question attached to this pain is: would it be better if we could just get rid of the painful memories we keep from past relationships? The ultimate answer is no. Forgetting can feel like a relief in the moment, but with time it’s clear that easy escapes like this are harmful–forgetting doesn’t free us, it robs us. It steals not only the pain but the meaning and depth behind our memories and our opportunities to grow and shape our identity. Avoiding discomfort might feel easier in the short term, but it leaves us emotionally hollow in the long term — less resilient, and reliant on incinerating every uncomfortable experience down a mental hatch.
And in many cases, someone’s inability to let go of something unfinished stems not from a lack of discipline but from holding onto memories and seeking comfort in nostalgia. We don’t just cling to the thing itself, but rather the memory of it: it’s as though we’re recalling a familiar movie scene — holding onto who we were and what we felt like in that moment. This can become a source of comfort or a familiar space to come back to when reality feels too uncertain or foreign. But nostalgia at the end of the day is just selective memory, soft around the edges, filtering out hard truths and leaving us longing for a version of the past. And while there’s nothing innately wrong with remembering the past, problems arise when we allow those memories to obscure the reality of our current moment. Many circumstances fall beyond our control. Living your life in the past, unable to move on, won’t offer closure, peace, or a solution, only impede you from enjoying the present.
Maybe the key then isn’t to forget or to obsess — but to hold space for what once was while acknowledging that unfinished business doesn’t have to feel like a burden we drag with us constantly. A friendship that slowly faded from your life can still leave memories that you’ll smile at late — that doesn’t mean you need to reach out or try to make amends — you can let go while still appreciating consciously the beauty of what you once had. Letting go isn’t about erasing the past, but about making peace with it.
Obviously, however, letting go of something that was once important in your life will not be a linear or simple process. However, as bittersweet as it sounds, maybe there’s a poetic beauty in acknowledging that a certain event in your life was only meant to last for a moment. Sometimes, the value of something is rooted not in its permanence but in its ability to teach us something in the time we had with it, and this fleeting, temporary nature can make that all the more meaningful. We live in a world that loves happy, definitive endings — and rightfully so — but not every story is meant to be tied up neatly with a bow. Open-ended closings will always exist, and that’s okay. Remembering these things is okay and can be wonderful, but at the same time, nostalgia is just that — a longing for the past. We can’t afford to live in it.
