Think about your last vacation.

You probably don’t remember every detail. What sticks are the high point — the highlight — and how the trip ended. If the final day was stressful or the flight home was a disaster, it colors how you remember the entire experience.

Psychologists call this the Peak–End Rule: we judge experiences not by their duration, but by their most intense moment and their ending.

This idea appears powerfully in the Torah.

When Moses warns Pharaoh about the final plague, he says it will happen “around midnight.” The Talmud asks: why the approximation? God is infinitely precise — and in fact, the plague occurred at exactly midnight.

The explanation is striking. Moses was concerned that Pharaoh’s astrologers might miscalculate the time. If they believed the event happened slightly before or after midnight, they would use that detail to discredit everything that came before.

A medieval commentator explains why this mattered. After nine devastating plagues, belief had already grown — but this was the end. And endings redefine memory. A perceived flaw at the conclusion could unravel months of accumulated conviction. Everything follows the ending.

We often focus on first impressions, but final impressions may be even more powerful. How something ends — a project, a conversation, a role, a relationship — becomes the lens through which the entire experience is remembered.

A simple takeaway: finish well. Be intentional about the last moments. They don’t just conclude the story — they define it.