“Beginning,” He Answered.

The blank look on their faces let
Sisyphus know
they didn’t understand
the hard part wasn’t
the work of pushing the rock uphill.

He almost enjoyed
the heaviness of the rock,
and the honest, exhausting labor
of those long days.

They couldn’t know
that momentum started,
even uphill,
carries its own weight.

They only saw the size of the rock,
and the angle of the hill,
and naturally assumed
the work they could witness
was the hard part.

No one was there
in the cool mornings
as he stared at his rock
in silence,
his feet still,
his hands gently resting
on its curved sides.

No one was there
to hear the unspoken words
shouted to the Gods, pleading
for the strength to bear,
not the rock,
but the desperate weight of wondering,
how to begin,
again.
”

— Gretchen Schmelzer

I have beginnings on the brain. Tomorrow I am giving the convocation speech at community college and I have been thinking a lot about the beginning of the academic school year—which has always felt like the true ‘New Year’s’ to me: where you celebrate with new notebooks – full of blank pages and possibility.

This year the act of beginning is different somehow. There was a break, a pause, a disruption in the way we got to do our work and our learning in the past two years. So, we are not just beginning—we are getting reacquainted with the territory we left—we are meeting ourselves in old places and new places again. We are starting, but in many ways, we are also picking up pieces we left behind as we move forward.

I have talked to many people who have returned to their offices recently and told stories about walking into their office or seeing their desks—as shrines of the day that they left in March of 2020. The cups still had coffee in them, the plants had died, their sweater was still on their chair. The papers on their desks were the projects that existed then. Their lives moved forward and yet some part of their old life stayed still—waiting for them. Returning to work is a beginning. But it is also time travel.

And now as we begin again—as the school year begins and as more and more companies are moving into a more rhythmic schedule—the term beginning feels too small. It feels too small because it’s not just a beginning—it’s a reunion. We aren’t just beginning—we are also assimilating—integrating—the past two years of experience. The past two years of adaptation. We are meeting the selves we were –even as we begin our year visioning who we want to be.

As we begin this year with more freedom of movement, we are confronted by the past two years of beginnings that didn’t happen the way we wanted—the school years that began and ended differently. And the beginnings of things we might not have imagined—beginning different habits—allowing yourself to live out different values.

You come to your beginnings this year with a heightened sense of what you want and what you may have lost. You have a heightened sense of what is important to you and what you are willing, or even eager, to let go of. And depending upon how the last two years have impacted you, you have more or less energy to bring to building new year.

But all of this – the integration, the re-emergence, the assimilation, the emotions—and even, perhaps, the exhaustion—may actually help us adults meet the beginning and be more open to growth and change than we usually are. I have observed adults to be impatient beginners. They run into areas of growth and development that are awkward or difficult – feeling the challenge of their learning edge and they misinterpret the feeling. They feel uncomfortable and think that signals that they are doing something wrong. When actually, that place of difficulty, of frustration, or awkwardness is precisely the place that growth is made of. A place of learning—of true beginning.

This summer, as folks have been heading back into their work and school lives, I keep getting the image of the child’s game Pin the Tail on the Donkey. On the wall is a picture of a donkey—the new year. In your hand is the tail, with tape on the top— hopes and plans you have for your beginning. And then you are blindfolded and spun around—a pretty apt metaphor for the past two years. You wobble in your best guess of the right direction to pin your tail on the donkey—where will you land?

The fun part of that game, of course, is that getting it wrong, and laughing about it, is exactly what makes it fun. When the tail is on the head, or even more hilariously, feet away on the lamp shade. So, you don’t win the game, but you actually do, by adding to the joy. The game points to an important way to hold lightly where we are starting.

So as we all take off our blindfolds this fall after being spun around, can we hold our beginnings lightly? Can we not take too seriously where we are beginning, but instead have joy that we can begin. That we get to play? And can we bring awareness to our starting place—so we can start wherever we are—in whatever state we are in—and allow ourselves to really be the beginners we need to be in order to grow.