Living In - What If?
According to T. S. Eliot.
We began yesterday looking at T. S. Eliot’s poem Burnt Norton. It begins
Time present and time past Are both perhaps present in time future And time future contained in time past.
We discussed this yesterday.
Today let’s read a little further.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.
Stop there.
What’s his point?
Let me say it this way.
Redemption — correcting errors, making amends, obtaining forgiveness or salvation — requires time to exist as it does.
Moving on.
What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation.
Stop again.
First note a similar sentence structure as the first one.
Each is laid out in three lines and there is an illusive false ending on the second line leading to a different conclusion that is corrected by the third line.
The statement, “What might have been is an abstraction remaining a perpetual possibility,” is very different than when you add the rest — “Only in a world of speculation.”
A world of speculation is not a real world with no possibility of existing.
Let’s look at the first line again.
“Time present and time past / Are both perhaps present in time future,” could be a complete thought but lacks something circular about time that comes with the real end, — “And time future contained in time past.”
Forward.
What might have been is an abstraction Remaining a perpetual possibility Only in a world of speculation.
What does this mean?
We live in the present with all our speculations. These can cloud what has actually happened, what we actually chose to do. Our actions and our regrets affect our present lives.
So what if we could go back?
What if we could go down passageways and open doors we didn’t do at the time?
This sets up where Eliot will take us next. Into the world of speculation.
The world of What if? The world of regrets.
Do you have regrets?
Are they holding you back?
Sometimes reading poetry is not an easy way to pass the time as we might at first think.