back where we began
“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
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“For last year’s words belong to last year’s language. And next year’s words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning.”
T.S. Eliot
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Life has a set of rules we live by.
In fact lots of rules.
Rules on how to live life, how to think about life, how to look at life.
There are so many rules it gets confusing.
Trust me.
They are all there, many unwritten yet etched in people’s mind and heads, because we live in a society, and communities, that function because there is an understanding among its members. Some may call it civilization or being civilized. I don’t really bucket it in anyway other than in other Life has its rules and requires some responsibilities and the rules kind of offer some boundaries for accountability.
I imagine I am suggesting that some of those rules are good.
The responsibilities ones.
I will call it kind of the responsibility compass:
- Be mindful of others.
- Do the best you can.
- Be the best you can.
- Don’t kill anyone.
- Don’t purposefully do the wrong thing.
- Be honest <or maybe just don’t lie about anything big>.
- Do the right thing as often as you can.
Yet.
Some of these rules are confuxing <or are ‘confuxed’>.
What I mean by that is they can conflict with another rule depending on the situation and context. Yeah. Sometimes a rule isn’t completely straightforward, but rather a strong suggestion. And that suggests all rules are fucked up <or they fuck us up> and they are confusing.
Why?
Because there is a lot of vagary and non specifics. There is a lot of room to roam within these Life responsibilities or … uhm … our responsibilities to Life. Within all these rules and responsibilities we not only have an almost infinite boundless area in which we have freedom to roam, but we also don’t have any specific rules in how to go about living Life or even how to live life.
We also struggle, as Eliot also suggested, because we want to use last year’s words, uhm, while next year’s words are awaiting to be spoken <but most of us can’t identify those words>. What I mean by that is how we frame our rules, principles and even norms can change over time. What was once simpler (not simple) has become a bit more complex – mostly because our connections to a wider variance of variables have also increased.
Anyway. Oddly all of this vagary and boundaries are both boundless and restricting.
And maybe it is because we view these unwritten rules as too boundless we tend to begin building boundaries in the sense of constricting or measuring in steps what we do or how we should view Life. That is actually a natural reaction when, and if, you see a bunch of people acting, well, unnaturally (in unacceptable ways).
But maybe we shouldn’t view it that way.
While there are gobs of books telling us how to think and what to do … there is no ‘one way.’ There is no secret nor is there any magic formula.
That’s why life begins and ends and has something in the middle.
Something in which the only real destination that matters, or is real, is the end. Oh. And that ‘end’ is somewhere off beyond the horizon we can see.
What that means is everything else is simply a stop sign, maybe a yield sign, not a dead end sign.
Here is what I mean by that. Many people set specific destinations in life.
Goals .. milestones … whatevers.
Only to find it isn’t really a destination but rather simply a rest stop on the highway. In fact many of those destinations, which are desired and have been well defined outlined and tasked, turn out to be places we reach and as you take a look around with a satisfied sigh of completion you end up saying: ‘shit. I’m lost.’
Or.
You get there and say to yourself: “now that I have made it here , what the fuck was I thinking, I want to go farther.”
“We didn’t come this far … to only come this far.”
Unknown
And then you start all over again. The ‘rules’ – whatever you thought they were – applied, but didn’t apply.
Despite rules and norms and expectations, it is quite possible that you arrive back where you started <metaphorically; not literally> and maybe, just maybe, you will actually know it, understand it, for the first time.
I stopped telling myself that I’m lost.
I’m not.
I’m on a road with no destination, I’m just driving with hope that I’ll find a place that I like and I’ll stay there.
I’m not lost, I’m on my way.
Ahunnaya
Maybe my point here is that rules for society are mostly just signposts more than anything else. Strong suggestions as it were. This is important because:
- Life is never linear.
- Life is perpetual circles and cycles.
And yet we constantly try to make it linear only to be constantly disappointed when we end up back where we began.
And disappointed when the words we vocalize end up being last year’s words.
All I imagine I tend to think about is that, in Life, there is truly only one beginning and one end.
Everything else is somewhere in between with some wrong way signs, some yield signs and maybe some stop signs and I imagine that means most of us feel lost on occasion.
And maybe we should simply think we are … well … on our way. No matter what the rules say. Ponder.
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