Beginning Eternal.
I’ll never know enough. No matter how long I live, or how hard I study a subject, the truth is I will always feel like a beginner. And I like it that way. It’s actually the best thing for me, because it stops me from thinking I know everything, and that’s a really good thing.
Knowing everything is the point where you stop learning, and you lose humility. So I call it the law of Beginning Eternal – knowing that you are always a beginner. I hope it keeps me humble.
Because humility can prevent a multitude of problems.
Humility in certain things is for me a struggle, and it’s all because of my demons. I grew up in the British equivalent of welfare housing. My family was never financially secure, and it was pretty obvious to me that we were the ‘poorest house’ on the street. I remember walking home with a friend from school one day, and he asked me ‘why is your family poor?’ I know that he didn’t mean it in a way that was derogatory or cruel, he was just asking a simple question.
But if I’m honest, even today, that still hurts.
To add to my struggles, I was the fat kid on the block. Even at a young age, food was my comfort drug of choice, and I used it hard. Being overweight as a teenager is never easy, and it just further pushed me away from feeling good about myself. The only thing that I felt I had to base any self esteem on was the one thing I had going for me.
I believed my mind was superior (you have to have something to feel special about right, when nothing else does?). That was the only thing I had to hold on to, and it served me as a child, but like most childhood patterns, we tend to have a hard time letting go. Unfortunately, this one is no exception.
So recently, when I was in a meeting, I had to fight to restrain my ego. The man who was presenting is a good man, and he has a formal education in the subject he was presenting on.
Yet all through his presentation, there was my ego, explaining in the recesses of my mind how he could have done it better, how it could have been more impactful, how the presentation could have changed lives if it were done a different way.
Ego, ego, ego.
Thankfully, I have learned enough about myself that I know where my demons want to take me, and practicing the law of ‘Beginning Eternal’ helps me to keep my mouth closed when it wants to open up.
Because the truth is, we are always beginning.
The ideas I had in my 20’s that seemed so good to me then now appear to be the fantasies of a young man trying to find himself in the world. Then, as now, I was still only ‘beginning’ to learn. I wonder what 65 year old me will think of the words that I wrote today. Hopefully, he’ll chuckle and laugh this off as ‘youthful inexperience’. Who knows.
But what I have learned is that by retaining the mind of a beginner, I am open to new ideas, new possibilities and most importantly, a sense of humility.
Humility has become my life preserver, and boy do I need one.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings