Returning to the Foundations

Sometimes we rush to tactics before we understand the depth of the matter. We hurry onward, to the details, the arguments, the new questions. But that is precisely where the mistake begins. For when we stop clarifying the foundations, the details too begin to go astray. The primary matters are not a stage we pass through on the way to what is truly interesting. They are the place to which we must return again and again, because each return to them is made from a different life, a different experience, different questions. And so one can think about the same thing for years and find in it each time something not seen before – because we have changed. There are things that do not grow old. The more we return to them, the newer they become.