We arrive where we started — and know it for the first timeWhat
We arrive where we started — and know it for the first time 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, FOUR QUARTETS When I read these lines as a psychotherapist, I don't read them as poetry about place. I read them as a precise description of what happens when someone does the real work — in a therapy room, on a long journey, or alone in a canoe on a quiet lake. The exploration Eliot names is the inner kind. The Hero's journey. Not a journey away from life, but a journey into it — into the parts of ourselves we have been too busy, too defended, or too frightened to meet. And then we return. The house is the same. The family, the town, the same relationships waiting. Nothing external has shifted. But the person walking back through that door has been reorganized from the inside. Every room is met differently. Every old wound, every long...