This is part of a larger series on Four Quartets. This is the fifth post on East Coker. Read More: Burnt Norton 1 2 3 4 5 East Coker 1 2 3 4 5 The Dry Salvages 1 2 3 4 5 Little Gidding 1 2 3 4 5
“Old men ought to be explorers… We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity, for a further union, a deeper communion.”
— T.S. Eliot, East Coker
There is no final destination.
No fixed point where everything falls into place, where all questions are answered, where the self is complete.
The illusion of arrival—of reaching some ultimate state of success, wisdom, or certainty—collapses under Eliot’s words.
The journey does not conclude.
Growth does not end.
Even in stillness, there is movement.
Even in understanding, there is more to seek.
The Dangerous Illusion of “Arrival”
There is a belief, often unspoken, that life is leading somewhere.
That if one works hard enough, learns enough, accomplishes enough, there will be a point of arrival—a plateau of certainty, of stability, of completion.
“When I have enough, then I will be secure.”
“When I find the right person, then I will be whole.”
“When I reach this goal, then I will have made it.”
But arrival is an illusion.
Each achievement, each realization, each moment of clarity gives way to another step forward, another layer to uncover.
The feeling of completion, if it comes at all, is temporary.
What is built will shift.
What is understood will be questioned.
What is possessed will be outgrown.
The desire for arrival is the desire for rest, for finality.
But rest, in its truest form, is not found in stopping.
It is found in learning to move with the rhythm of things, in embracing the ongoing process rather than resisting it.
To be at peace is not to be finished.
It is to accept that there is no finishing.
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Growth Feels Like Restlessness—And That’s a Good Thing
“In order to arrive at what you do not know,
You must go by a way which is the way of ignorance.”
Growth is not comfortable.
It demands uncertainty.
It requires stepping beyond what is already known, into spaces where knowledge fails, where familiar patterns no longer hold.
There is no expansion without discomfort.
No evolution without shedding something of the self that once was.
A thought is loosened.
A belief is dismantled.
An identity is abandoned.
To move forward, one must pass through ignorance.
To grow is to unsettle oneself.
But the discomfort of growth is often misread.
It is mistaken for failure, for falling apart, for losing one’s way.
The impulse is to retreat, to return to what feels stable.
But Eliot does not frame uncertainty as a mistake.
He suggests that it is the necessary condition for becoming.
If growth is to continue, there must always be something unknown ahead.
Stagnation Is the Silent Killer of Potential
To resist growth is to resist life itself.
“If we are not growing, we are shrinking.”
There is no standing still.
What does not evolve begins to decay.
A career that does not expand becomes constricting.
A relationship that does not deepen becomes hollow.
A mind that ceases to question becomes rigid.
Stagnation is often mistaken for security.
The self resists change because it does not know what will be left when the old structures fall away.
But stagnation is not safety.
It is erosion.
To remain unchanged is not to preserve what is.
It is to begin the slow process of undoing.
And yet, the fear of loss persists.
The need to hold onto what is known, what is familiar, what has defined us for so long.
The reluctance to step into what has no guarantees, no promises.
But to hold onto what no longer serves is to carry weight that was never meant to be permanent.
What seems secure today may become a weight tomorrow.
What is held too tightly will eventually be taken.
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The Invisible Shifts That Shape Who We Become
Growth is not always marked by grand transformations.
It is not always visible.
More often, it is quiet.
Slow.
Almost imperceptible.
A thought reconsidered.
A reaction softened.
A question asked instead of an assumption made.
“We must be still and still moving.”
Stillness is not the absence of movement.
It is the deepening of it.
The kind of growth that does not announce itself, that does not demand recognition, but reshapes perception from within.
To become is not always to change dramatically, but to refine.
To sharpen awareness, to soften resistance, to deepen presence.
What grows subtly is not less significant than what grows visibly.
What shifts within often matters more than what is seen.
A person may appear unchanged to the outside world but be undergoing an entire undoing within.
A moment of realization may happen silently, without any outward sign.
Growth is not always loud.
It does not always come with a visible transformation.
But it is no less real.
The Paradox of Stillness and Motion: Mastering Both
“We must be still and still moving
Into another intensity, for a further union, a deeper communion.”
To be still and moving.
To hold presence while expanding.
To remain rooted while reaching forward.
This is not a contradiction.
It is the nature of becoming.
Stillness without motion is stagnation.
Motion without stillness is restlessness.
To move toward something deeper requires both.
A willingness to remain where one is, while also being pulled forward.
A capacity to accept the present, while being open to what is unfolding.
Eliot does not offer resolution.
He does not suggest a final resting place, an end to the movement.
He only reminds us that the journey does not stop.
That to be alive is to keep exploring.
That to find is always to lose again.
That to grow is to embrace what is still unknown.
“The end is where we start from.”
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