On Returning (coda)

The coda to the On——ing series — the essay that steps past the finale. Where On Completing faces the close directly, On Returning is what comes after the ending, the quiet turn back toward the beginning with everything the series has gathered. It is the source of the epigraph that opens the book One Step Short: that the measured life is not the life spent measuring. Brief and resolved, it functions less as an argument than as a closing chord, letting the whole sequence come to rest and gesturing, gently, at starting again.

Read it last, after On Completing, and let it function as a closing chord rather than an argument. It is the source of the line that opens the book One Step Short — that the measured life is not the life spent measuring — and it lets the whole sequence come to rest before gesturing, gently, back toward the beginning.

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