A Beginner at Forty (Or Thirty, or Fifty)

So, Here We Are

I bought an acreage, though not with any particular intention of becoming a farmer. And yet, here I am, collecting eggs at a rather ungodly hour in the summer and having become somewhat of a slave to twenty poultry animals, all of whom have names. We started a garden, with plants dying for reasons I cannot explain and others thriving just as mysteriously. We're now looking into cows and sheep, and designing buildings for them to live in.

Somewhere along the way, I seem to have acquired an entirely new set of interests, responsibilities, and questions I don't know the answers to.

At forty, I've started something new, and I haven't the faintest idea what I'm doing.

My rosemary bush, for example, has grown so large from a single tiny plant that I can't cut and dry it fast enough. Not that I know how to dry it properly in the first place. I suppose there's a method to it, but for the moment, I'm simply clipping branches and hoping for the best.

And that's the thing about being a beginner. You don't always know what you're doing. Sometimes you don't even know what questions to ask. You just start.

The Peculiar Pleasure of Not Knowing

There's a certain vulnerability in beginning something new as an adult. We spend so much of our lives becoming competent, and through those years we have the voice of our parents encouraging us to grow, and honestly, just to keep going. We learn our jobs, establish routines, raise families, manage homes, and become the people others rely on. Somewhere along the way, we become that voice for ourselves. And perhaps, without quite realizing it, we begin to limit ourselves to the things we already know how to do.

So we decide to learn something new, and suddenly we're back at the beginning.

Perhaps you're learning to knit, and your first scarf has developed a mind of its own, with uneven stitches and a shape that bears only a passing resemblance to the pattern. Maybe you're trying to grow vegetables, only to discover that the tomatoes have taken over the garden while the lettuce has given up entirely. Or perhaps you've signed up for a pottery class and are wondering why everyone else's clay bowl looks like a bowl, while yours looks like a small architectural disaster.

There is something humbling about it. And, if we're willing to let it be, something rather freeing.

We don't have to be good at everything. We don't have to master a skill in a weekend or turn every new interest into something impressive. We can simply enjoy the process of learning.

The mistakes are part of it. The crooked stitches, the failed recipes, the plants that don't survive. They're not evidence that we're incapable. They're evidence that we're trying.