“The world is round and the place which may seem like the end may also be the beginning.” – Ivy Baker Priest
The lesson that has played over and over throughout the day is that the only attitude that allows life’s next step begins with being willing to start again. It is the beginner’s mind that sees possibility everywhere. Once you claim to know, you are committed to how you believe it should go, you lock yourself in with your expertise and problems complexity is sewn into the edges of how you see. The beginner or at least one who is willing to start over again, looks at everything.
You have to be committed to getting up again more than you are afraid of falling down, because the truth is for most of us that we are going to fall, and fall frequently. It might not mean anything more than gravity’s pull on the human body, or the spirit not quite ready to fly. It all has to do with the love of learning.
It helps to hang around with kids. Tonight was my son’s 14th birthday party. They are learning a dance routine that they plan to wow their school with at the talent show.
The refrain, “ok, start over” was louder than the music. They laughed, admonished and laughed again. This is the heart of learning it over again. The humor of the silliness of our attempts mixed with the frustration of the misses makes for good friends if you let it.
I have been facing some big challenges at work that are making me face the start over in many ways. I watch as I swing between these two places, laughing at the ridiculousness of the issues and being stuck in the frustrated resentment of things gone wrong. I think I learned something today watching the boys in the dance. The beginners mind is both at the same time, the mind of looking for new possibilities and bearing up against the weight that pulls you down.
One of my all time favorite quotes that keeps me going in the juggle is this one by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe: “Whatever you can do, or dream you can, Begin it. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it, Begin it now.”
