This past week my husband and I went to Pt Reyes National Seashore and stayed at the very same campground, Sky Camp, that we had stayed at over 30 years ago, the very first time I had come to visit him in California.  The occasion was our 30th wedding anniversary. We realized we hadn’t been back there, just the two of us, for a very long time.  We were both amazed by the rush of nostalgia and the layers of memories that flooded us.  We were moved by the passing of an entire family lifecycle that had happened between these two points in time.  We had wed, birthed two children, raised two children (school year by school year), built a home, pursued and experienced two careers,  sent our girls off to college, launched two young adults, watched our parents age and buried my two parents, together. As we traversed the very same camp site, spot  #01, there was something very tender for us in recognizing how we had changed.  The flexible bodies and naive minds of the young couple we were, who barely knew each other, had now become the aching bodies and experienced minds of the well known to each other, older adults, we are now. 

Earlier that week, on the exact night of our anniversary, we had gone out to dinner to celebrate.  It was a lovely dinner, but a dinner. It didn’t stimulate the intense perspective of our weekend trip.  There was something about being in the place we were at the time of our early connection that was so powerful.  The complete sensory context was enveloping.  The smells of the pines and the cypress, the ocean air, the setting sun over the ocean, the echoes of the bird calls and the climb up the hill to the campground recreated an experience of long ago, but in our current day form.  Something about the overlap of a new experience overtop the old memory was profound.  A timewarp of sorts, cradling an entire family birth, growth, and passing ons.

I feel so grateful for this emotional surprise.  There’ve been times I’ve returned to a place I enjoyed hoping to relive the magic and am disappointed.  I plan a whole trip around having the fun I had in the past, but it’s not the same.  And maybe that’s the lesson.  It’s not the same, it can never be the same.  If you go back to a place you’ve been, you’re bringing “current you” and “current you”’s life.  But if you go back with the intention of honoring something about the place that was special for you, yet expecting to create a new experience there, you are building on the past.  We weren’t going to Sky Camp to relive what we had done, but to honor it.

The literal meaning of milestone is a stone placed beside a road to show the distance to a particular destination. These stones give you a perspective as to how far you’ve come.  They serve as benchmarks for distances traveled and the time and effort it’s taken to get there.  Traveling to celebrate our milestone was a fortuitous coming together of our intention and our effort that set up the possibility for a little unexpected magic. It created the emotional and physical opportunity to stop and appreciate where we’ve been and how far we’ve come.  It was also a good perspective as to what we have left.  As my husband pointed out, we won’t be coming back again in another 30 years.  Perhaps we should go again a little sooner.

In my last post I shared about the importance of a thoughtful goodbye.  It was inspired by leaving a rewarding job after 11 years and doing my best to stay present throughout the leaving process.  This past week, as I moved into my new role, I’m facing a fresh set of challenges.   Having had the role of the “expert” in my old job, it’s indeed pretty humbling to become a “beginner” again. I’m anxious, clueless, and constantly having to ask for help.  I feel foolish and like I’m a burden.  So, in order to help support myself, I decided to ask the “expert” me what advice she would give the “beginner” me.  Indeed, thank goodness, my expert self came through.  She advised me to do a little refresher course in the Zen concept of the “beginner mind.” It’s an idea frequently shared with those who are feeling uncertain in a transition.

A “beginner’s mind” is a Zen teaching that represents a particular attitude.  It doesn’t actually refer to being a beginner, but having the mindset of a beginner who’s free from pre-conceived ideas and biases.  Without prior judgments and expectations,  a person is open and eager to see everything as if for the first time.  According to the Zen teacher Shunruyu Suzuki, open-mindedness can foster the development of new skills, better decision making, and great empathy.  On the other hand, an outlook of all knowingness (like an expert) can be quite limiting.  It’s not that prior experience should be negated, but reapplied so that the uniqueness of each situation can be appreciated.  

A beginner’s mind can free us up to learn and allow us to be surprised by what unfolds.  It’s natural to prefer to feel in the know and so we tend to engage in confirmation bias.  We look for evidence to support what we already believe and are comfortable with.  Our preexisting belief shapes what and how we see the world around us.  In fact, studies show that perceived expertise can create illusions of competence and an unrealistic expectation for our base of knowledge.  Using “non-knowing” as a tool can help us let go of the need to be right which can trap us into having to pretend or insist that we’re right.  With an open mind we can see people in a new light or a problem to be solved in a whole new way.  In fact, studies have shown that a beginner’s mind can be a useful approach to finding answers.  For example, studies have repeatedly shown that medical practitioners using a beginner’s mind line of questioning form better relationships with patients and are able to gather information they wouldn’t normally ask about. Simply through listening with more curiosity and openness they more often learned some bit of information that led to a successful diagnosis.  

Looking at the world through a child’s curiosity can also lead to more playfulness and the ability to stay present rather than evaluating yourself while doing something.  With a beginner’s mindset, a person can let go of the fears of being wrong and explore options with interest.  It’s a way to put one’s ego aside and utilize prior knowledge in an expansive rather than limiting way. Often people become weighted down by anxiety and stress related to doing a difficult task.  Knowing how hard it is can actually get in the way!  Letting go of preconceived notions of how things “should be” or how you “should be performing” is a great weight off one’s shoulders.  Research also shows the use of a beginner’s mind as an antidote to burn out.

As for myself, it would help a lot to let go of my own expectations.  Soon enough I’ll know how to accurately document in the new record system, be able to fill out my timesheets, and to learn the nuances of a new work culture and patient population.  One way or another, I’ll get there, so why not enjoy the experience of being a beginner?  We literally only do something for the very first time once, so why not let go of the pressure, and give myself a  fresh opportunity each time? By the 48th time of beginning, I just may get close!