From T.S. Eliot’s “The Four Quartets”:
In the general mess of imprecision of feeling,
Undisciplined squads of emotion. And what there is to
conquer
By strength and submission, has already been discovered
Once or twice, or several times, by men whom one cannot
hope
To emulate–but there is no competition–
There is only the fight to recover what has been lost
And found and lost again and again: and now, under
conditions
That seem unpropitious. But perhaps neither gain nor loss.
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business.
I think this is the most encouraging metaphor I have read about the writing life–that it is in an endeavor of lost and found. That it is not a competition between myself and better men, but it is achieved by “only the trying” and that the rest is not my business. Very encouraging news for a young(ish) writer.
