Poet David Whyte has a book called Consolations: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words. It really is breathtaking, and he reads some of his word-poems in Sam Harris’ Waking Up meditation app too.
Part of his description of the word beginning is, “Beginning is difficult, and our insulating rituals and the virtuoso subtleties of our methods of delay are always a fine, ever-present measure of our reluctance in taking the first close-in, courageous step to reclaiming the happiness of actually having started. Perhaps, because taking a new step always begins from the central, foundational core of the body, a body we have neglected, beginning well means seating ourselves in the body again, catching up with ourselves and the person we have become since we last tried to begin. The radical physical embodiment leads to an equally radical internal simplification, where, suddenly, very large parts of us, parts of us we have kept gainfully employed for years, parts of us still rehearsing the old complicated story, are suddenly out of a job. There occurs, in effect, a form of internal corporate downsizing, where the parts of us too afraid to participate or having nothing now to offer, are let go, with all of the accompanying death-like trauma, and where the very last fight occurs, a rear-guard disbelief that this new, less complicated self, and this very simple step, is all that is needed for the new possibilities ahead. It is always hard to believe that the courageous step is so close to us, that it is closer than we ever could imagine, that in fact we already know what it is, and that the step is simpler, more radical than we had thought: just picking up the pen or the wood chisel, just picking up the instrument or the phone, which is why we so often prefer the story to be more elaborate, our identities to be safely clouded by fear, why we want the horizon to remain always in the distance, the promise never fully and simply made, the essay longer than it needs to be and the answer safely in the realm of impossibility.”
This really hit me. Those parts of us that repeat our story in a loop. A story we believe because it’s the only one we ever hear. Once those parts are gone, we might actually just do the thing that we always thought we couldn’t. How can that change us? How can that define us? How can that open the door to the destiny that was there waiting for us all along?
Beginning is hard. But it is also magical and fresh and exciting and an opportunity to grow. May we all remember that no matter what, we can always begin again.