My first blog post reminds me of the Rilke quote, “Resolve to be always beginning – to be a beginner!” This is one of the most important ideas I’ve ever embraced. Because it reminds me that it is the quality of our lives that matters most. The attention placed on the smallest moments enrich and expand life, and this quality of always beginning makes life an adventure. Less is taken for granted when we are always beginning.
In this age of technology and incredible comforts, it’s easy to forget how much we have at our disposal. Don’t get me wrong, I love it. I am blogging after all, and I’m not going long without a hot bath or a hot meal. But there are many things I do take for granted. I like the idea of always beginning because it keeps me honest. It gives me a chance to reassess, recenter, recalibrate, renew and begin again, from wherever I am at that moment.
I think about that when I sit to meditate. The practice itself is centuries old, and millions of people throughout the ages have sat in meditation. This creates a link, a continuity through time and practice, but also there is a new beginning. Each time I, or anyone, sits to meditate it is a resolution to be a beginner, to start again, to try and see with more clarity. In fact every moment of every day is an opportunity to start fresh. We begin again with ourselves, with how we want to live our lives. We ask ourselves who and what we want to be a part of our lives. We have endless opportunities to consciously choose those things that make our lives worthwhile. That is one of the great gifts of always beginning.
I suppose that is partly why I wanted to start a blog, as an exercise on how to really be myself. I want to tell my story to me, because I forget so easily what I have accomplished, and all the lessons I have learned. A lot of my life has been spent gathering varied experiences and now it feels like it’s time to distill their meaning. I want to see for myself what I have learned, reflect on those lessons, and share what I found. It’s an exercise in being – being the me I always felt I was on the inside but so rarely expressed in my outer life. I didn’t translate it. This blog is that translation. And so here I am, beginning again.
I have lived with these words of Rilkes’ for a long time. Every time I began a new college, a new job, a new relationship, a new project. Some succeeded, some fizzled, but this project of always beginning I hope to take to a conclusion I can’t begin to imagine. A conclusion that lives within me but needs excavation.
I was in sixth or seventh grade when I read, “The Secret of the Forgotten City,” a Nancy Drew mystery about archaeology. I was so enthralled with it, I wanted to become an archaeologist. I wanted to spend my days digging in the desert, unearthing the mysteries of the past. This blog is my archeology dig. It is about digging and scraping away all the layers that collude and cover my truth, the unique and authentic truth of myself. I believe it is the same for everyone. We may use different words and tools, have different experiences, but we are all trying to get to our truth buried deep within.
Then each day, each new beginning, is a peeling away of what no longer suits us, what no longer fits quite right. A new layer of ourselves is revealed, and from there we can choose to embrace what gives our life meaning and discard what doesn’t. In part this blog is about everything that has worked for me, all the things in my life that make perfect sense. I hope some of what I’ve found strikes a chord within you. After all we are all on this journey together in one way or another.
So I thank Rilke for his revelatory writings and Hildegard of Bingen for her deep honoring of the feminine and all the other teachers that will surely come into these pages as I make my way through the maze of what I am and what I hope to become. But what I hope will always remain is my resolve to always be a beginner. There is great peace inside if we look. Here is Rilke’s beautiful quote in full:
You are so young, so before all beginning, and I want to beg you, as much as I can, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions themselves like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which could not be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.
Resolve to be always beginning – to be a beginner.
Letters on Love
