We shall not cease from exploration,
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive from where we started
And know the place for the first time.
--T. S. Eliot
We spend much of our lives looking forward to milestones we hope will mark our passage into wisdom - that time and place when once and for all we will know all there is to know.
When I am 13, I'll be grown up, we say. When I am 16, 18, 21, drive a car, graduate, marry, write a book, own a house, find a job, or retire; then I'll be grown up.
When we seek complete transformation, mere insight is disappointing. We find we don't know all there is to know - not at thirteen or 35 or 80. We are still growing up.
The baby, the child, the younger person each of us was yesterday is still with us; we continue to love, hate, hurt, grieve, startle, delight, feel.
There is no magic moment of lasting enlightenment; simply a series of fleeting moments lived one at a time each day. They bring us home to who we've always been.
What small thing will I learned today?
