Life 2.0: Back to School at 55

What I've Learned About Beginner's Mind and Wonder

It’s that time of year when many of us start something new or are turning over a new leaf (pun absolutely intended :). I certainly am. Here I am at 55 going back to school again—this time as a student! It’s equal parts scary and exciting.

For 47 years, from the time I started Kindergarten to the year I retired from university teaching at 52, fall meant the start of a brand new year. It was one of the things I loved about my profession—every year, every semester was new. New students, new courses, new material, and sometimes new colleagues. I loved that I could begin again, over and over. For me, fall always felt like spring, or New Year’s.

But this is a whole new level of new. I’ve given up my professor’s hat, so to speak (there really should be a hat!), and now I’ll be one of the students soaking up everything my professors/lecturers have to teach me.

I’m wondering, has fall meant a new beginning for you? Could you use one?

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The Problem with Routines

Even though I had some novelty in my work, I also hated the stultifying routine that my life would settle into once the semesters were underway. I’ve talked about this before and even sketched out what a typical day was like. Many of you responded that your days felt like that too—an endless round of working, taking care of other people, checking too little off the growing to-do list, and getting too little sleep.

When life starts to feel like that, when we feel stuck, like we’re running in place but not really going anywhere, we get depressed. It’s an awful place to be, I know, where it feels like nothing will change, nothing will ever be new again. But it will! The nature of the universe is change. Everything is always changing. And we are too, for better or worse.

When I was at my lowest, this was the realization that saved me. Everything changes, all the time. And I could too.

Old Quad at University of Manchester last Monday

Change can start with tearing things down, but it can also start by bringing something new into our lives. We can learn something new, meet new people, or simply change our point of view—see the world through new eyes. That is probably the most fundamental change we can make. And once we make it, everything else in our life changes along with it.

There is a popular motivational saying that if we’re not growing, we’re dying. Sometimes it’s attributed to William S. Burroughs. There is a lot of truth in it. But we may also have periods of dormancy, like plants do in the winter before they start growing again in the spring. If those down times extend for too long, though, they can feel like dying.

I often tell people that my escape was about survival. I felt like I was dying. My office at work felt like a coffin. My house felt like it was falling apart and closing in on me—especially during the pandemic. I needed to breathe again! I didn’t know what I needed or wanted exactly, I just wanted something NEW!

I’ve had a lot of newness in my life these past two years—probably too much at times. It feels great now to be settling into a new apartment and a new school year with the knowledge that this will be my life for the coming year. Predictability never felt so wonderful!

Beginning Again

I took the train to Manchester last Monday and met my new instructors in the Creative Writing MA. And I got a pile of reading to do before the first class even meets on the 23^rd. I’m already feeling like I have a new full-time job. I’m excited about the reading and writing I’ll be doing, really focusing on the craft of fiction which I have so far only dabbled in. But I’m anticipating that I’ll have little time for much else.

So here I am, a beginner again. Even though I taught and studied literature for nearly three decades, I know that writing literature is a very different thing. Even though in one of my classes we will be reading some texts that I have taught before (some of them many times before), I know that this is an opportunity for me to see these stories or novels from a new point view—from the perspective of the writer rather than that of the critic or scholar.

Old Quad at University of Manchester last Monday

It makes me think of the Zen Buddhist concept of beginner’s mind, which is about being open, empty, and free of preconceived ideas.

“In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's there are few.”-- Shunryū Suzuki, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind

The goal is to approach anything familiar or old with a sense of openness and newness. Once we feel like we understand or know everything, life feels closed off, like a dead end.

I’m tired, frankly, of being the expert. I want to be a beginner again. I want to remain open to all that is new and different in this program. Not just with the goal of becoming an expert in something new, but with the goal of feeling all of the wonder that opening myself to literature can bring. I was looking at it from the outside before. Now I’ll be looking at it from the inside. Taking a new perspective makes me feel alive in a way that my old profession didn’t anymore.

Wonder

Are you feeling the “new time of year” vibes? Or are you feeling stuck in the same old place? The shortening days might be filling you with dread. Or you might simply be yearning for something new, but you aren’t sure what.

Often we can’t do much about the circumstances that are bringing us down. Winter is coming whether we want it to or not. And we may not be able to quit our job and head off to an ashram. But we can cultivate a new mind. We can learn to see the world anew, to see it as children see it.

One the best parts of being a parent is sharing new things with your children, experiencing the wonder of that newness with them, and reliving our own wonder again. I still feel that sometimes with my daughter. When she visited me in Edinburgh last month, there were moments when I could show her something or teach her something new and she would say, “That’s so cool!” There is no feeling like it.

But for the most part, I’m on my own and have to cultivate my own wonder now. I have to be the learner, not the teacher.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Rachel Carson:

 “A child’s world is fresh and new and beautiful, full of wonder and excitement. It is our misfortune that for most of us that clear-eyed vision, that true instinct for what is beautiful and awe-inspiring, is dimmed and even lost before we reach adulthood. If I had influence with the good fairy who is supposed to preside over all children, I should ask that her gift to each child in the world be a sense of wonder so indestructible that it would last throughout life.”

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I’d love to hear from you! How are you feeling about fall? Are you starting or returning to anything? Would you like to learn something new? What can you see from a new perspective? How can you bring some novelty and wonder into your life?

I look forward to seeing you in the comments!

Best,

Anne

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