SELF, DIDN'T I KNOW YOU WHEN?

I have had some experience with whether it is good or even possible to "go home" again, as I grew up in a small western Kentucky town, where my parents still lived after I left for university, and to which I still periodically return. (My parents are long departed.)

Another return I experienced was, after living in Jamaica, I returned to the U.S. for the first time in 3 1/2 years. Returning with different eyes, I was a different person and had a changed perspective on life in the States. For example, I experienced a heightened awareness of the public infrastructure that we are blessed with here. I am speaking of things that we take for granted which poor countries have an economically difficult time providing: sidewalks, street curbs, street lights, street signs, electric grids that work, clean water, parks, schools, and so on. We possess great public wealth. These were not new things to me; it was that I saw them with fresh insight.

The place to which one returns has also changed--the flowing river is different in each spot and time. There is truly nothing that is stationary in this world. So, it's a moving target-river-home to which one returns. My old home town certainly is not the same. For example, some years ago WalMart moved in; subsequently, downtown moved out.

Returning home can be a measure of who one has become (and how much one is the same). It is a good place for adding a perspective to self-knowledge. However, the experience can be quite uncomfortable, as I have seen. One's history can be weighty. It is an emotional, moving experience.

Finally, a quote by T. S. Eliot, in which I have inserted a phrase, is appropriate here: "...the end of all our exploring will be to arrive at where we started and know the place [and OURSELVES] for the first time."

SOUL MIRROR

This strikes me as important: that we should look for ourselves in the reflection in the relationship mirror. This indicates that relationships ultimately teach us about ourselves in a process of self-learning. Intimacy is about both our inward plunge and outward extension to another. As we progress in our comprehension of our own deepest nature, we are contacting the Ground of our Being in the Universe and there resides Love in the Universal sense. The self-knowledge/self-love becomes Universal Knowledge/Universal Love. Another way to put it is that to contact the love in our hearts is to love God. Relationships, no matter their difficulties, pain, and impermanence, teach us about ourselves, thus about God.

All this is idealistic (it is), as many will say.

On another matter: Probably the most salient reason that I have such a high regard for females is that they have a tendency to be more developed in both interpersonal and intra-personal matters (a generalization, of course). It is accepted doctrine in education, according to Howard Gardner (in Multiple Intelligences), that humans possess at least eight intelligences. Two of them are interpersonal (between people, i.e. relationships) and intra-personal (self-knowledge). (It seems to me that the two types of intelligence are linked.)

None of this is new to most women, as they know first-hand that men are (usually) not as developed in these two areas. Nonetheless, this is a valid reason why women should be highly respected. This is why I admire them. They help me see myself in their mirror.