Beginning Again?

Robin Nest Photo © Linda Kloosterhof iStockPhoto® #208792

Does it feel as though you’re always starting over? I’m beginning new projects, new rounds of old projects, new teaching quarter. Therefore, clients and students are doing the same; some students have even taken the leap to begin or return to their higher education. Their stories and their dedication inspire me.

Beginnings take courage, so I offer this favorite passage from John O’Donohue’s To Bless the Space Between Us: 

“Perhaps beginnings make us anxious because we did not begin ourselves. Others begat us. Being conceived and born, we eventually enter upon ourselves already begun, already there. Instinctively we grasp onto and continue within the continuity in which we find ourselves. Indeed, our very life here depends directly on continuous acts of beginning. But these beginnings are out of our hands; they decide themselves. This is true of our breathing and our heartbeat. Beginning precedes us, creates us, and constantly takes us to new levels and places and people. There is nothing to fear in the act of beginning. More often than not it knows the journey ahead better than we ever could. Perhaps the art of harvesting the secret riches of our lives is best achieved when we place profound trust in the act of beginning. Risk might be our greatest ally. To live a truly creative life, we always need to cast a critical look at where we presently are, attempting always to discern where we have become stagnant and where new beginning might be ripening. There can be no growth if we do not remain open and vulnerable to what is new and different. I have never seen anyone take a risk for growth that was not rewarded a thousand times over” (2).

He also warns, “There are journeys we have begun that have brought us great inner riches and refinements; but we had to travel through dark valleys of difficulty and suffering. Had we known at the beginning what the journey would demand of us, we might never have set out. Yet the rewards and gifts become vital to who we are. Through the innocence of beginning we are often seduced into growth” (3).

Isn’t it great we aren’t in it alone? We support each other in our beginnings and our risk-taking, and here we are! Before we know it, we’re completing something and beginning again. Wishing you “great inner riches and refinements.”

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Text © Gwyn Nichols 2011. All Rights Reserved.

Photo © Linda Kloosterhof iStockPhoto®  #208792

My Favorite Kind of Payday

In my introductory college skills class this quarter, a student told me about repeatedly sabotaging his final Naval promotion because at that level, he’d be required to write reports galore. Writing terrified him. This week he submitted his report on this quarter’s learning–one of the best reports I’ve ever received. It was thoughtfully written, and formatted and illustrated with accuracy and artistry. Here’s my favorite paragraph: ”This is how I learn best: learn, then apply, then do it all over again. When I was in school, I felt like the teachers asked me to put a bike together that had tons of bolts, screws, and nuts and only gave me a fork and told me to put it together in the dark. Now I have the tools and I can see.”

I cried. Now that’s a teacher payday! This is why we do it, so these beautiful, brilliant people can see what we see in them, and achieve what we know they are capable of.

The student must show up and submit to the work, and it helps if that student arrives humble and scared, but willing. Once again, I’ve seen the proof that writing is a learnable skill. And got to feel like the miracle worker. (That would be the student, really, but I did show him how.)

For another touching teacher payday, catch Amanda Lucille’s day in Ukraine with the Peace Corp:

• little victories (suddenlybeautiful.wordpress.com)

My Students’ Best Advice

My students are in finals week. I asked for advice to pass along to future students, and they all said,

DON’T FALL BEHIND!

They sound even more adamant than I did that first day of class when I warned them.

But let’s word that positively, since we now understand that our brains tend to negate the negatives, ignoring the don’ts and nots and nevers, as though converting all positive and negative integers to their absolute values.

STAY CURRENT!

KEEP UP THE GOOD WORK!

JUST DO IT!

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