“What we call the beginning is often the end
And to make an end is to make a beginning.
The end is where we start from.”
T. S. Eliot
I was thinking about our pursuits towards achievement in life, and how it is a cycle of journeys and destinations. The journeys of striving lead to destinations of success, but those destinations beget further journeys towards other successes. We know that Camus suggested the struggle is part of the prize, but I think T.S. Eliot is the best writer we encounter at revealing how beginnings and endings fold into one another. Every time something ends - a stage of life, a relationship, a project - something new is beginning, often imperceptibly, because the “end” is not a terminus, it’s a threshold (and highest of all, in Christ’s “Whoever loses his life for My sake will find it.”, Matthew 16:25, where the “end” of the self is the “beginning” of spiritual rebirth).
So, when I think about something like my writing journey over the past 35 years < or insert your own equivalent here >, I find that the gain from striving for a good end is probably at least as formative as the end itself. In other words, any successes I’ve had that contribute to my well-being should be embraced at least as much as the end of the successes, because if “to make an end is to make a beginning”, then in most cases the journey is more valuable than the destination, because each journey encompasses every end, and every end encapsulates each part of the journey - and also because the journeys make up far more of the adventure than the destinations.
Consequently, the value of success in writing lies not primarily in the moment of achievement, but in the vitality and meaning it gives to the act of striving itself, just like the anticipation of a luxury meal often nourishes the soul’s appreciation of fine dining more than the sensation of having eaten the meal. You know what I mean, I think; like how, for those inclined, the seasonal tending of a garden can bring more joy than the brief periods of bloom; or how, if you’re a lark, the fresh dawn often feels more wondrous than the day it foretells. And it’s almost always the case that the effort of learning shapes us more deeply than the end knowledge itself.
All that constitutes the sense in which the striving for good things in general ensures that creation itself is part of the principal reward, where the primary gift of success is not the success, but who you became in pursuit of it. And those who have been disenchanted by a false source of fulfilment will be the first to tell us how pursuing anything valuable merely for its own sake proves to be a hollow endeavour that merely leaves us yearning for more.
