What does it mean to begin again?

What does it mean to retrace the structures of our being?

T. S. Eliot once wrote:

“And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”

To me, these words speak of repetition — of cycles, patterns and return. Each return bearing the fruits of new knowledge, of ourselves and of the external world. We might arrive where we started, but we do not necessarily arrive as the same person.

Sometimes this inner knowledge, or the knowledge we draw from our experience as human beings within the world, is not easily articulated through words. Perhaps this is where making becomes another way of knowing.

Repetition can become a practice through which we try to make sense of the senseless. But perhaps repetition can also create a new kind of sense — a kind of un-sense. Something that does not need to be fully articulated or understood in order to be known.

So what does it mean to return?

To repeat?

To begin again?