Look, endings are important. I didn't need to learn about the peak-end rule to get that.
It's one of those things that school teaches you indirectly—we all remember the frenzy of the final week before summer. Mostly, there is joy to these endings: everyone amped for the start of summer.
But then you reach the last days of middle school for some, or high school, or summer camp or whatever, and you realize that a part of your life is now over. There's no next school year, no going back, no restart.
If you're lucky, you realize this in the moment, while it's happening. You savor it. You have a conversation with a casual college friend on the last day before graduation and think, with a warm pre-nostalgia, that you may never see them again.
The wonderful thing about the endings in the first part of our life is that they're shared. It's not just your last week of class before summer break—it's everyone's last week of class. It's not just your last time staying up late in the common room, chatting until the wee hours—it's everyone's last time.
What school doesn't teach you is that most endings, from there on out, will be lonely ones.
When you move from one place to another, the rest of the neighborhood stays put.
When you leave a job, your coworkers just keep on doing their jobs.
And this has always felt a little sad to me.
There's something lovely in savoring the small stuff of an ending in some company. It's harder to savor the last all-company meeting or the final sales update if it's just your last.
As you get older, I suppose you just have to work harder to squeeze the meaning out of endings. No one else is going to do the work for you.
Parenthood teaches this lesson, too. My wife and I talk, with a pained sadness, of the "last time they'll fall asleep on our chests" or "last time they'll sit in the high chair."
But it's hard to appreciate these endings in the moment. Partly, that's because our endings mean something different to others.
"Last time they'll fall asleep on our chests" signals an independence from us as well as literal physical growth.
And it may be the same for work endings, too. Last time that I update the sales document signals the first time that someone else takes over that responsibility.
There's a poetry in that, too. It's just hard to see.
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