Maybe it’s just semantics but I think the word choices we make are important. Our words frame our understanding of the world.

I’ve been having a lot of ‘lasts’ recently as I head into retirement. My last interview for a hire, my last field trip, my last principal’s breakfast meeting, etc. For a while I was seeing these as endings, kind of a shutting of a door never to be opened again, with a sense of finality. But I’ve had a shift recently.

Now I think of these endings more like closure. It’s not about an ending as much as a sense of completion. Like putting the last piece of a puzzle in. When a performance ends, the show is over, it’s time to go home. When a puzzle is completed there isn’t an instant finality to it. Closure in this sense invites time to admire what was accomplished.

It’s a small shift in language, but a large shift in perspective. It’s not an ending, it’s closure.