I"m a Beginner

Every day I mess something up, something big or something small.  Every day I make a mistake, more accurately some mistakes.  I don’t spend enough time writing.  I offend someone.  I’m late.  I get stressed out.  I do something someone doesn’t like or something I don’t like, or both.  I’m a failure.  So the next day I start over.  I’m a beginner.  Does this sound hopeless?  Is this some existential crisis?   Or is this just life?

Or…

Is it a chance for grace, for redemption?   Is it God’s way of showing that forgiveness, improvement, and growth are also everyday occurrences?  This isn’t a religious tract, but I wonder where every day comes from.  Why did I wake up this morning?  What was the point?  Why didn’t God fire me from life yesterday when I messed up?  The world doesn’t need any more people, especially no more people like me, someone who seems to mess up in so many ways every day. 

I may have mentioned this before, but I used to work for a man named Larry.  I was in my late teens and early 20’s and, to put it kindly, I wasn’t his best worker.  I was rude, immature, lazy, and self-absorbed.   I quit on him two or three times, and he always took me back like a prodigal son.  He wasn’t a religious man, nor was he outwardly sentimental or affectionate, but he was one of the closest representations of God on Earth I had ever known up to that time.  Despite my numerous faults and infidelities, he always forgave me and he always took me back.  I didn’t appreciate it back then and I don’t understand it now.  Why was he like this?  Why did he forgive me every day?

Every morning when I wake up, it feels like God has forgiven me and taken me back, too.  I’m a beginner.  I get to start again.  The slate has been wiped clean.  Maybe not with other people.  Maybe not even with myself.  But with God, with life, I get to start over.  I get another chance.  I can apologize for yesterday.  And I can do it differently today.  I can think differently.  I can behave differently.  Today is a new day.

And maybe I don’t have to wait until tomorrow.  Maybe I can be a beginner right now. 

What would it mean to be a beginner?

·      It means I know a lot less than I thought I did.

·      It means everything is new.

·      It means I would not be quick to speak because I’m still learning who people are.

·      It means I would ask a lot more questions and not be so quick with answers.

·      It means I would be more open to learning about people, about life, about the work I have been called to do.

·      It means I would have no grudges to forgive, no past, no anger, no judgments, no “issues.”

I can be a beginner right now.  I can start all over right now.  I can experience grace and forgiveness right now.  I can Get Started and Keep Going right now…as a beginner.

Fifteen Books

“Intellectual death is endemic in areas where people are unprepared to obtain new information for development. Learning is a way of staying alive.”

Israelmore Ayivor –  Shaping the Dream

“Order and simplification are the first steps towards mastery of a subject”

Thomas Mann

“All that is necessary for a student is access to a library.”

Thomas Jefferson – The Papers of Thomas Jefferson, Volume 16: November 1789 to July 1790

Fifteen books.  That’s what arrived at my door yesterday.  Fifteen books in a little box.  The doorbell rang and when I stepped outside I could see the deliveryman running to his truck as I shouted out an enthusiastic thanks.  The books are from the school where I will be doing online studies in order to get a Master’s degree in history.  I’m very excited, as I often am at the beginning of any new venture or new year, but enthusiasm rarely sustains me, even when I’m doing something I love or something I want to do.  Reading these books and being successful in my studies for the next 18 months will require the following:

First, I will need to create a schedule.  In the literature from the school it was recommended that one would need to devote 15-20 hours per week of study.  I have no idea how I’m going to do that.  I suppose on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, I can easily devote an hour in the afternoon and an hour in the evening.  That’s six hours.  On Tuesdays I can do one hour in the evening. That makes seven.   On Fridays I can devote three hours.  That’s ten.  And I can do five hours on Sundays, three in the morning, and two in the evening.  That’s fifteen.  That’s only the bare minimum.  I want to give myself one day off, but maybe I’ll need to do two hours on Saturdays.  

I say that plaintively, but here’s the thing:  I’ve long fantasized about having a life where I can devote myself to reading and writing.  Now my fantasy is becoming a reality.  So I won’t complain.  I will do what needs to be done.  This is a golden opportunity.  Gold is not only precious; it’s valuable.  So is the chance to further my education.  It’s not to be squandered.

The second thing I will need is to get my life in order.  I need to make sure my car and my place and my workspaces are organized and clean.  I don’t want to lose time because my life is a mess or because I can’t find something.  Things need to be prepared so that daily life gets in the way as little as possible. Bills need to be paid and clothes need to be ironed.  Dishes need to be washed and beds need to be made.  None of this takes a long time, but I no longer have the luxury of letting things pile up.

The third thing I will need is to manage my time.  This means deciding what is really important.  The important things are my Muse, and my children.  And I still have to go to work and do a good job.  I still want to write.  I need to exercise, eat well, and get enough sleep. 

The fourth thing I will need is the support of anyone who believes in what I am doing and will encourage me to Get Started and Keep Going, even when, especially when, it gets difficult.

What I’ve done is take on a part time job.  The good news is that I can pick the hours I want to work. 

There is no bad news. 

If this blog seems self-indulgent, I don’t mind.  This may be how anyone who is in Purpose has to regard his or her choices.  In Becoming a Writer, Dorothea Brande says we need to have dual personalities.   One personality is the artistic one, the one who writes or paints or studies.  This is the child at play.  This is the saint who is doing God’s work.  The other part is the parent who watches over the child to make sure he gets enough food and sleep, or the manager who makes sure the artist doesn’t starve or bounce checks.  I have to be both.

I also have to take advantage of this opportunity.  Well, I don’t have to; no one is forcing me to do this.  But I feel that this is the next step in my spiritual, emotional, and intellectual growth.  I feel called to do this, even though it’s going to add stress and work to my life.  I think we all have to do what we are called to do.  Dorothea Brande also says this:

The man of genius is one who habitually (or very often or very successfully) acts as his less gifted brothers rarely do.  He not only acts in an event, but he creates an event, leaving his record of the moment on paper, canvas or stone.  As it were, he makes his own emergency and acts in it, and his willingness to both instigate and perform marks him off from his more inert, less courageous comrades.      

I’m not saying I’m a genius, but if I am, or I will be, then it is because of the work I do.  Nothing more.  Nothing less.

The Lily

The modest Rose puts forth a thorn, The humble sheep a threat’ning horn: While the Lily white shall in love delight, Nor a thorn nor a threat stain her beauty bright.

William Blake – The Lily (from Songs of Innocence, Songs of Experience)

Some thoughts:

·      When I write I sometimes worry that I am the worst kind of purveyor of trash and conceit, writing as if I had anything new or wise or interesting to say.  When I look at my numbers (the number of people who read my blogs), I think that the world must agree and that is why my writing is largely ignored.

·      Then I realize that if I want to be happy and productive and really make my work beautiful, I cannot allow myself the luxury of caring about any of that, the number of readers, or if I will ever make money, or become a “famous” writer.  There is only one thing a writer or any artist has a right to care about and that is the work itself.  Nothing else matters but the work itself.

·      I can’t focus on being “important” or “interesting” or even as someone who makes a contribution to the world.  Even those things, (perhaps they are good things and perhaps they aren’t) have to be surrendered.  None of that matters compared to what is really important.

·      What is really important is the work.  To be more precise, what is really important is doing the work.  Motivation doesn’t matter.  It all fades away anyway.  I know people who do art or writing or dance or something they love and it doesn’t matter if they do it to escape their circumstances or make money or to make the world a better or are just trying to get better at it.  Eventually, when one gets lost in the work, the doing of the work, one finds that the why doesn’t matter.  All that matters is doing it.

·      I find that doing the work is easy.  Getting to the doing is hard.  Staying there is even harder, for me at least.  But at this moment I’m there and this moment is all that matters.

·      I find that if I keep working, eventually all the doubts and questions and motivations disappear.  I’m just here.  I mean I’m really here.  I’m not somewhere else in my mind.  I’m not in the past or the future, neither of which are real anyway.  I’m just here and in this very moment.  I’m not thinking about regrets or rages.  I’m not worried how I’m going to solve some particular problem.  The truth is that when I’m working, I have no problems.  I’m just putting one word in front of the other.  That’s all I need to focus on.  This is why I like to bring pen and paper with me wherever I go – so I can always be in the moment.  Maybe in that moment I’m miserable or scared.   So I do more of my work, even if only for a few minutes, and I’m back in the present.  Sometimes I have a journal with me.  If I don’t, I can get a piece of paper and write.  Then I can keep it or throw it away (though I usually keep everything I write even if I rarely go back to look at it).

·      I find, and this has been a great discovery, that I can make anything my work.  For example, I can clean my kitchen and discover the same joy I have when I write.  I can take any job, any task, and simply by doing it with all my might, by trying to get better at it simply by doing it and doing it some more, I can transcend this world by being fully in it.

·      Put more pragmatically, if I’m at work and I find my work to be boring or not enjoyable for any reason, I look for a way to be better at it.  I read something that will teach me to be more effective and useful at work.  Or I simply focus on one thing I can do at that moment and then tell myself I will be the best at it.   So I will mop a floor better than it’s ever been done.  Or I will focus on a particular task as if I were going to get all the praise and recognition and money possible.  When I focus like this, I find that my praise and recognition come from within.  As for the money, it will come or it won’t.  What does always come for me when I focus is joy and joy overcomes fear of lack of money and fear of everything else.

·      With regard to fear, I find it to be a liar anyway.  It always paints some imaginary and fictional picture and that picture is always the same.  In the picture I end up desperately unhappy and hopeless.  Maybe not desperately, but unhappy nonetheless.  In my picture I am homeless or broke or in prison or in Hell.  But when I do my work, the picture fades like mud being sprayed by a hose.

·      So there’s my solution.  I work.  Not to do, but to be.  I work on any “problem” that arises if I can, or I work on something that matters if I can’t.   I take a walk or write or read or give my full attention to someone I love.

·      There’s no thorn here.  There’s no horn raised against me to ram me.  My work is the lily. And the lily helps me to Get Started and Keep Going every time.

A Little More

“Show me the way to go home,

I’m tired and I want to go to bed.”

Drinking song my father used to sing (even though he didn’t drink)

All I want to do is sleep.  No one would blame me if I didn’t write tonight.  For some reason that makes writing even more imperative.  I may not write a lot.  I may not even write well, but I’m writing.  I’m writing for my Muse who, even though she is the one who gives me the words to write, likes to have something to read in the morning.  I’m also writing for myself, because I don’t want to miss my goals or let them slip from my hands.  So I keep pounding away on my keyboard hoping that I’m making sense and hoping even more that anyone who reads this will understand the importance of doing something, anything, every day, in order to get closer to the goal. 

I will admit that I don’t feel closer to some of my own goals.  The house on the beach seems far away.  So do my hopes of putting my kids and grandkids through college.  I’m not saying these things won’t happen; I’m just saying they seem far away right now. 

And maybe that’s why I’m writing even when I’m tired.  Maybe this is my way of telling the Enemy and circumstance and misfortune that I’m not beaten.  Maybe this writing is my way of getting just a little closer to my goals, even though I don’t know how and I don’t see a way.  Maybe what matters, what really matters, is that I do what I love, offering this small token of love and gratitude to God, to my Muse, to the world, and to my loved ones.  Maybe I also owe it to myself to not give up just because I’m tired. 

Incidentally my fatigue seems to have vanished.

Maybe deciding to Get Started and to Keep Going gave me the energy I needed. 

My gratitude to God and my Muse are great for giving me the strength and encouragement to do just a little more tonight.  That’s all I need to do for now.  I just needed to do enough to remind me that I can always do a little more.