“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
There is no limit to one’s perspective or perception involving the above quote. All of us have experienced life’s journey to such a degree at this point, that we can retrospectively look at where we’ve been and where we are . . . right now. Our failures, mistakes, choices, successes and accolades have become the sum total of our identity without an investment of conscious unawareness for many of us. How could that possibly be you ask? Take a brief look at where your life is right now. How did you get there? If you were to go back to where you first lived as a child, went to school, became involved in sports activities, took dance classes, piano lessons, the friends you had, your teachers, coaches, instructors and mentors with the eyes you have now with all of the experiences you have known . . . what sage advice would you share with that little boy or girl? What does that place look like to you now? You are in the portrait of your life, and there were no mistakes . . . only brush strokes as Edgar Degas shares with these words, “Only when he no longer knows what he is doing does the painter do good things.”
For some of us there was a plan, focus, discipline or outline to our lives . . . how did all that work out? Others floated with the cycle of life and became responsive to what was presented to them, rather than reactive. There were those who just became lost and lived for the moment, adhering to a doctrine of individuality without concern for consequences or balance. And then Samuel Taylor Coleridge suggests another group of people who lived this way . . . “Common sense in an uncommon degree is what the world calls wisdom.”
In the last analysis, our exploring on this journey takes many twists and turns leading us into many caverns, onto majestic mountain tops, curved forks in the road, glorious sunsets, the rising of the sun, immeasurable moments of joy, unknown discoveries, illuminated days of high energy, continuous feelings of hope, experiences of immense sadness or loss, deep connections of friendship, the pronounced aura of gratitude embraced by the giving and receiving of love through our fellow man. We realize the limitlessness of what life offers each of us through our experiences and exploration, as Eckhart Tolle simply states with these profound words . . . “I and life are one. It cannot be otherwise.” JLR