“We had the experience but missed the meaning.” So said T.S. Eliot.

I am reflecting on why I feel the need to be more consistent in posting on the blog section of my website. It’s like a constant “pending” action on my to-do list. It doesn’t make me feel quite as bad as other “as yet undone” bits…perhaps because it’s less urgent? Or less work-related? But still there it sits there, knocking at the door of my conscience for some of the time and energy of which I am short.

The question that came to mind is the following: am I doing this for others, or for myself? The truthful answer is probably both, and because it’s both, and as I name this, I begin to find some internal motivation for what I’m attempting here: to reflect personally and a little in the open, about what I’m doing, or seeing, and why.

“The unexamined life is not liveable for a human being”, Socrates is alleged to have said when he opted for death over exile from his quest for knowledge and truth. I don’t know exactly what it meant to him, but for me, it means that my life makes more sense to me, tastes fuller and has more direction and presence when I stop to think about, understand, ask God about, and even own what I’m feeling, thinking, and deciding, at any given time.

Interestingly, education theories (my workplace-life) are all about self-reflective practice nowadays. You get “extra brownie points” if you can prove you teach from and towards that practice. But at this moment, what matters to me, in truth and perhaps selfishly, is the quality of presence to and self-awareness of myself that I begin to taste when I stop to reflect on what’s behind and underpinning my life. It is also the only doorway I have to being better open to the God in whom I want to live, who I find sneaks in more easily the more honest I am. Knowing God and knowing oneself go together (said Augustine). “And eternity life is this…” (John 17:3)

So I am retaking up this process of writing and reflection for the rest of 2025. One of my brothers wrote me a letter in which he invited me to spend time each day just writing about what I’m living, so as to see it reflected on the page because “we owe it to our future selves”. I am going to try and commit to this and at least once a month, I shall post something here, when I feel it might be useful for someone beyond myself.

August 7 2025