There was a period of months last year where I went through the worst time of my life. It was a time of general ruin — physically, mentally, emotionally. In many ways, I feel better. But the utter fall I suffered is terrifying, for if it happened once, does that mean it could happen again?

There is a poem, however, or rather part of a poem, that resonated with me deeply during that time — the last few lines of the first part of T.S. Eliot’s “Burnt Norton,” which is the first quartet in his aptly-named collection Four Quartets. I copied these lines into my journal on March 23:

Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.

Below, I added:

A comforting read. Reality is hard to bear, so have grace for yourself when you struggle. Before you lies the present, don’t lose sight of it — otherwise, you risk succumbing to the tyranny of the “what if.” And it’s a cruel ruler.

Months later, on June 14, I copied those same lines I’d copied in March in my journal. There are things you read which feel meaningful, but often it’s only with time, with how long it stays with you that you realize what a meaningful encounter it was, that you came across a piece of literature that has surreptitiously but surely crept into the core of your bones.

Now, before I move on, I’m rather certain in March when I read the poem, I misread it, and what I took from it in the months moving forward was built upon that misreading. So what I’ve written here isn’t some academic account of the poem’s meaning but simply a description of what it meant to me, whether I correctly or half-correctly or zero-correctly understood it. Ok, having made my disclaimer, on we go!

I don’t find it discomforting to recognize that we cannot bear very much reality. Yes, as I’ve grown older, the horizon the future has narrowed in ways, and the weight of my regrets have certainly multiplied. The unbridled optimism I possessed as a child has been replaced with a sense of weariness, but that’s not a call for despair. With that sense of loss, I’ve also gained a complex sensibility I don’t think I had when I was someone burdened with fewer scars, with less life. Now, I know what the many older adults in my life would do in response to me stating the fact that I’ve aged — give me teenage-style eyerolls. And maybe years later when I reread this, I’ll too roll my eyes to the back of my head.

Anyways, I don’t find it discomforting because it’s true. We cannot bear very much reality. Time in many ways is ever-present. Laments about the past are there. Desperate hopes for the future are there. The persistent anxieties and mixed pleasures of the present are there. There’s enough there to ruminate in perpetuity. I certainly know. I mean it was wrecking me. And without therapy, the seductive and destructive hold of rumination would likely still have a hold on me. But what Eliot’s poem told me, when I read it, was that to succumb to these endless labyrinthine halls of the mind, of memory, of time replayed and predicted and experienced was to lose your footing in the world. In efforts to get better, I succumbed to something else I never thought I would — self-help influencers. But one line that has stayed with me from my brief foray into that world was, “Be where your feet are.” Be where your feet are. Be where your feet are. Be where your feet are.

Perhaps in vain effort to extend the self-help metaphor that touched me so, if you’re standing on bad soil, it will damage you. I wasn’t able to ruminate my way out of rumination. (Believe me, I tried.) What helped me was to move. I went on walks, out in nature, out in the streets, often alone, and eventually, and increasingly now, with other fellow-beings. Now, I’m still me, and I love my alone time too. But I tried to turn my attention to the world before me. To see mountains. To see trees. To admire the old goat behind the rotten wooden fence. I am also trying to return to dance. To the pleasures of dancing to rhythm. Spinning. Stepping. And indulging in joy. And I try to remind myself that as much as I might want to succumb to the endless stream of anxiety-inducing scenarios my mind creates, I must choose to remain firmly planted where I am. To remind myself we cannot shy away from life. Now, I often feel frail, and fearful, and panic-stricken, but this is a brief life we share with each other. I don’t want to let it pass me by.

There is a human tendency to ruminate on the past, the future, and lose sight of the present, and maybe in that sense, we struggle to bear the concreteness of the reality before us insofar as the past and the future and the constructions of the mind and the artifacts of the heart all compete for our attention, often pulling us away from the real world before us. How do you balance it all? I think that’s the key question.

Anyhow, I’ll conclude this loose and wandering blog post by pasting the first part of “Burnt Norton.” I hope you too enjoy it.

Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take
Towards the door we never opened
Into the rose-garden. My words echo
Thus, in your mind.
But to what purpose
Disturbing the dust on a bowl of rose-leaves
I do not know.
Other echoes
Inhabit the garden. Shall we follow?
Quick, said the bird, find them, find them,
Round the corner. Through the first gate,
Into our first world, shall we follow
The deception of the thrush? Into our first world.
There they were, dignified, invisible,
Moving without pressure, over the dead leaves,
In the autumn heat, through the vibrant air,
And the bird called, in response to
The unheard music hidden in the shrubbery,
And the unseen eyebeam crossed, for the roses
Had the look of flowers that are looked at.
There they were as our guests, accepted and accepting.
So we moved, and they, in a formal pattern,
Along the empty alley, into the box circle,
To look down into the drained pool.
Dry the pool, dry concrete, brown edged,
And the pool was filled with water out of sunlight,
And the lotos rose, quietly, quietly,
The surface glittered out of heart of light,
And they were behind us, reflected in the pool.
Then a cloud passed, and the pool was empty.
Go, said the bird, for the leaves were full of children,
Hidden excitedly, containing laughter.
Go, go, go, said the bird: human kind
Cannot bear very much reality.
Time past and time future
What might have been and what has been
Point to one end, which is always present.