Nagging Quote

As I mentioned a few posts ago, I have been reflecting on my time in St. Thomas and (as always) life in general. So if you care to sit with me a moment, I will share some ponderings which came to fruition this evening. And then I promise I will get back to travel stories and pretty pictures. :)

Since around the time I was heading to St. Thomas, I have been nagged by a quote - actually part of a quote - that I vaguely remembered reading in the preface to a book. I couldn't remember what book it was or when I read it and I certainly didn't remember the complete quote. But the gist of the quote was something about going out and returning to a place. The part that kept popping into my head was the ending, which went something like "and to know it as if for the first time."

During the past few days the quote has continued to come to my mind and now that I am back on the mainland (yes, I actually did come back!!) and on a high-speed internet connection, I decided to search for it online. Since I had such sketchy details of the quote this wasn't the easiest task. But I like a challenge and at long last was able to locate the quote. Very interesting indeed. Here it is...

We shall never 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.

The text is from TS Eliot's poem "Little Gidding" which I have not yet read and I have no idea of its context or scholarly interpretations. But these words have come to have a particular meaning to me in light of my experiences and the reflections floating through my head since seeing my Willy T photo. My thoughts in recent days have been focusing on how we see ourselves. It seems to me that we know ourselves only in part. In fact others may recognize some of our attributes more easily than we do because they see us through a different lens (with different baggage) and in some ways see us more objectively. And I have been concluding that part of our purpose/journey in life may be to seek experiences that will help us "come into ourselves" or in other words to know ourselves more fully, to develop a complete picture of who we are.

And then it begins to fascinate me that this quote from TS Eliot kept returning to my thoughts. And the words which I didn't really understand before are now starting to make sense to me. I think the place we "come to know" by exploring this world is ourselves. That captures what I was feeling with my Willy T posting -- that in going to St Thomas I went out exploring and then came to know myself as if for the first time. I didn't necessarily change. At least on a fundamental level. No, I "arrived where [I] started" -- back to myself, the same person I was before and have always been. But now I know myself ("that place") more fully and so, in some sense, have changed. Changed because how I see myself affects how I carry myself and how I make decisions for the rest of the journey. And indeed I hope that I "shall never cease from exploration." And I wish you all the best in your explorations as well.