This is part of a larger series on Four Quartets. This is the fifth post on Burnt Norton. 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
The Dance of Time: Finding Stability in Constant Motion
“Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.”
There is movement in everything.
The world turns, time unfolds, the body ages, the mind shifts.
Thought itself is motion—spiraling, looping, returning, reaching.
Nothing holds still, not really, though we often pretend it does.
Eliot’s Burnt Norton lingers in this contradiction, in the way change is both constant and unnoticed.
The way we move without realizing it, the way we resist what is already happening. The dance is not something we choose to enter.
It is something we are already within.
The only question is whether we see it.
The still point is not an escape from motion.
It is not a place outside of time.
It is within the movement itself, woven into the rhythm of things.
To say there is only the dance is not to say that motion is chaos, but that movement is the form. Structure is not separate from change but made of it.
And yet, we resist.
We resist because we think of change as something external, something that happens to us rather than something we are already participating in.
We resist because we believe that stillness means control, that holding on tightly is the same as holding on securely.
We resist because we mistake motion for instability, when in fact, motion is the only thing that has ever allowed us to remain upright.
The Illusion of Stability: Why Time Doesn’t Hold Still
“Time present and time past
Are both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.”
Time does not move forward in a straight line.
It bends. It folds over itself, past and future pressing into the present, shaping it.
We imagine we are walking forward, leaving things behind, but in truth, nothing is left. Every moment carries its history.
Every step is tied to the step before.
The movement is continuous. What has been lingers.
What will be is already forming.
And yet, we speak of change as if it is something separate, something that arrives from outside of us, something disruptive. We imagine the present as fixed until, suddenly, it is not.
But there was never a single moment that was still.
Change is not an event.
It is the condition.
We resist because we do not like to think of ourselves as fluid.
We hold onto old versions of who we were, believing that if we let go, we will lose something essential.
But identity is not a static thing. It shifts with the rhythm of experience.
The self is a movement, a series of becoming.
“What might have been is an abstraction
Remaining a perpetual possibility
Only in a world of speculation.”
The illusion is that we could have stepped differently, that we might have danced another way. But what has passed is not theoretical.
It is fixed in the pattern, woven into what comes next.
The dance is what is, not what could have been.
The body moves forward, not backward.
The rhythm of life is not something imposed on us from the outside.
It is something we shape as we move within it.
Even in moments where we feel stuck, even in moments where we believe nothing is changing, the current is carrying us forward.
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Resistance Is Futile: How Holding On Breaks You
To resist movement is to create tension.
To brace against time, against change, is to exhaust oneself with the impossible.
And yet, we do.
We hold onto what was, thinking that by sheer force of will, we can keep the world from shifting under us.
But movement does not stop simply because we refuse to acknowledge it.
The past continues to press into the present.
The body continues to change. The world does not wait.
And eventually, the pressure breaks us open. The illusion fractures, and we are left standing in a moment that was always coming, even as we tried to pretend it wasn’t.
Eliot does not offer comfort.
He does not promise that seeing the dance makes it any less relentless.
He simply states it as fact. There is only the dance.
Whether we resist or surrender, time moves. Change happens.
We are mistaken when we think we have the power to hold things in place.
The river does not stop flowing simply because we refuse to step into it.
The seasons do not pause to wait for our readiness.
And yet, even in the inevitability of change, even in the relentless motion of things, there is a center.
The Still Point Is a Lie: Where True Stability Exists
The paradox: within the motion, there is stillness.
The still point is not separate from the turning world, but at its center.
Not a place of escape, but a recognition.
A moment where movement is no longer fought, no longer something happening to us, but something we are within.
This is not a contradiction. Motion and stillness are not opposites.
To find the still point is not to step outside of time but to recognize how deeply embedded within it we are.
There is no outside to the dance.
No vantage point from which to observe it without being part of it.
The structure is not imposed from above; it is created by the movement itself.
To step into time fully is not to control it but to recognize that it is already carrying us.
There is no final arrival.
No moment where we have fixed everything in place, where nothing else will shift.
There is only this moment, and the next, and the next.
And in each of these, the pattern is still unfolding.
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Surrender to Motion: The Only Way to Stay in Control
Eliot does not ask us to step outside of time.
He does not suggest that we must transcend motion to find peace.
Rather, he tells us that peace exists within motion.
That to find rhythm is not to still the body but to move with awareness.
“There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.”
The dance does not begin when we are ready.
It does not wait for us to understand.
It is already happening.
It has always been happening.
We are mistaken when we think of change as a series of separate moments, as a thing that happens to us in bursts, disrupting the stability of life.
Change is not separate from life.
It is life.
We are already in motion.
Already stepping forward, even in moments of hesitation.
Even in loss.
Even in uncertainty.
And so the dance continues.
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