I think that each and every one of us is a character in a book. Our own personal autobiography that encompasses our whole lives.

But much like a favorite childhood book or a bible in the care worn hands of a devout Catholic, there are pages that are dog eared, faded, and bindings that are so stressed from repeated readings that when the book is laid on the table closed, it still opens slightly to that chapter.

These are chapters that I think we all have in our autobiography...chapters that are never closed because we find comfort in their words, in their memories, in their message. Chapters that we want to read over and over and over again because something in them, some small paragraph has not allowed us to forget that chapter, to close that chapter in our lives for good.

Sometimes that chapter is about family, about some unresolved issue that never was mended and we go back and read it over and over and over in hopes of finding the missing clue to fixing it. Maybe the chapter is about a dream we had that we never quite reached.

Often it is about a relationship with someone that never had a chance to end its time in a way that was healthy and good. A love, a friendship, a partnership or a passing acquaintance. The chapter ends in our book long before the story is fully played out and it leaves you longing for closure, that final reading that you can let go of that part of the past and move on to the next chapter.

But do we really need that closure? Why must we close those chapters at all? And what if WE are not ready to close those chapters yet for fear that we are losing some part of ourselves?

Speaking from my own autobiography, I can safely say that there are many chapters in my life that have been closed before I am even done reading or writing them. Friendships and loves that never reached their full potential because something clipped them short. Things that never got said that needed to be said, things that were said that were not supposed to be said, and things that should have been said differently but anger and bitterness got in the way.

Can we ever go back to these chapters and rewrite them? Resolve the problem and say what needs to be said in order to close the chapter for good or reopen it for the future? I think we have the ability to do that sometimes. Other times we have to just let the chapter go unfinished because finishing changes us, changes who we are, sometimes in a good way and sometimes in a bad way.

I have many chapters in my autobiography that I look back on occasion and wish that they could have ended differently. There are certain romantic relationships that ended in a way that made them tragic love stories that never reached their full potential while others dragged on like paint drying on a wall and needed to end much sooner.

And there have been friendships that have been lost that should not have been lost but anger, life, fate, and karma pushed them past the point of healthiness. Instead of stepping back and allowing things to ebb and flow as they should, words get spoken and choices get made and it ends, abruptly.

These are the chapters that never close. Chapters that await a rewrite, to change the outcome of the book.

There are chapters I wish I could rewrite. There are chapters I wish I could change the outcome of how things ended. There are chapters that I go back over in my head often and think "why did this happen and why can't I go back and change this?"

I think we all have chapters that are never closed. Chapters that haunt us every day. Loves that go unknowing, friendships that break without warning.

Do you have the power to rewrite your own unclosed chapters?