More T.S. Eliot

There are three conditions which often look alike

Yet differ completely, flourish in the same hedgerow:

Attachment to self and to things and to persons, detachment

From self and from things and from persons; and, growing between them, indifference

Which resembles the others as death resembles life,

Being between two lives—unflowering, between

The live and the dead nettle. This is the use of memory:

For liberation—not less of love but expanding

Of love beyond desire, and so liberation

From the future as well as the past. -T.S. Eliot



This is a one quote that I used for my paper, although I shortened it a bit. T.S. Eliot believed that memory is our freedom from the past and future. While we remember a past event we are in-between time, neither acting in the present or waiting for the future. Memory is the only means to be free from time. Eliot saw time as being a sort of bond to reality and to life on Earth. He was, as we all are, more interested in immortality and the pressure of time hinders the freedom of immortality. Memory has the capability of holding information, storing emotion, and liberating time. Wow, the power of memory!