Arriving Where We Started: Advice from T.S. Eliot

"We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time."

~ T.S. Eliot

Four Quartets, "Little Gidding" (V)

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Have you reached the place of knowing? You may arrive there many times. What 'aha' has touched you recently? After moving across the country, I spent months in a state of inner wrangling. Like a cowgirl, I was rounding up the wayward cows and calves from the wide plains of self-definition. Finally, I arrived, all of me accounted for, and deeply understood 'I have arrived, I am home.' 

Eliot's verse also reminds me that, although our journey of self, and our journeys in relationship with others-- become dog-eared, rubbed thin, and greyed with age...they are still dear, if not a tad weary. Oh how we quest! Oh how we explore! 

Our frailties brought on by illness and mortality reset our awareness. Suddenly alert--like turning your car onto the home stretch, we look into the faces of loved ones and arrive at absolute knowing. You "arrive where we started, and know the place for the first time":  the essential love, the essence of love...and raw, breathtaking gratitude.

This absolute knowing can also mute all that is unessential during the hours of dying. Surely this is occurring in the higher consciousness--the soul of the one severing the silver thread. It may be a similarly graced occasion for persons at the bedside. If the opportunity arises, let the unessential be muted! 

At the end of life, we arrive where we started! 

What does this T.S. Eliot verse bring to your heart?

Thank you for caring!