useful member of society

i've had several conversations with people in the past few months about...(cue scary hitchcock music)...the future. or, more specifically, MY future. great. because i almost know where to start, right? there's been, as usual, discussion about whether to do something interesting or something i'm passionate about or fascinated by vs. doing something useful or meaning or significant in some way. (dramatic rolling of the eyes.) and, also as usual, i'm completely frustrated and even more confused at the end of each of these conversations.

and then, a couple of things happened. well, several things happened, actually. no, no great epiphanies or moments of enlightenment. (well, i suppose it depends on your perspective...) but i spent saturday afternoon helping a friend clean out the apartment she's going to be moving into. (elle, it's kind of on par with cleaning your apt. in whittier after lisa moved out. you wouldn't believe the stuff we found--the highlight being a half-set of dentures left in a cupboard above the refrigerator. yum!) but cleaning grease and dead spiders out of cupboards and scraping old wallpaper off of the walls... i don't know... it was good. most of the time here, i feel like a shadow of who i am--or who i should be. but on saturday, for half a second, i was a useful member of society. and then i started reading t.s. eliot again. and somehow it all made sense...

At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
...
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. And every phrase
And sentence that is right (where every word is at home,
Taking its place to support the others,
The word neither diffident nor ostentatious,
An easy commerce of the old and the new,
The common word exact without vulgarity,
The formal word precise but not pedantic,
The complete consort dancing together)
Every phrase and every sentence is an end and a beginning,
Every poem an epitaph. And any action
Is a step to the block, to the fire, down the sea's throat
Or to an illegible stone: and that is where we start.
...
We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

from the Four Quartets