New Year's Resolutions

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 Little Gidding

On this day in 1965, Poet T.S. Eliot died in London at the age of 76. Eliot’s The Waste Land, published in 1922, is considered the single most influential work of poetry of the twentieth century. Like many of his contemporaries, Eliot warned of the destruction of civilized society and the waste land that would result. Known especially for its literary allusions and archetypal imagery, the poem seems to be intentionally confusing and baffling...perhaps as the world looked post WWI.

My favorite of Eliot's poems, however, is the little portion above from Little Gidding which is the fourth and final poem of his larger work Four Quartets. There is much to analyze in this poem, but the best part of all to me is the line that says

"And the end of all our exploring/ Will be to arrive where we started/And know the place for the first time."

Doesn't that sound like what we do every new year when we make resolutions to take a different step in life, turn over a new leaf, claim a new perspective.

Life goes on, the days are the same length as are the months, but a resolution changes the way we look at it all...enabling us to "know the place for the first time!"

All the best however you resolve to move forward in the new year!

God's Peace for us all.