Begin Again

Resilience, Forgiveness and Endless Renewal

Nobody’s perfect. Nobody gets things just they way they want every time. For most of us, life is a practice ground where we need more than one do-over before we get things right.

What a gift to be given permission - by ourselves, by others, by the world - to fail and then try again. What a relief to stop pretending perfection is possible or even necessary. What a balm to be forgiven, to not be abandoned simply because we are humans doing our best and sometimes needing another chance.

On a good day, parents know this. Partners and friends know this. Work colleagues and even strangers know this, too. Being alive in a fallible body with a fallible mind in an oh-so-fallible world means sometimes we make mistakes. We often don’t live up to our ideals. Our hopeful brains concoct visions of the perfect day, the perfect home, the perfect job, the perfect life. And then our imperfect beings fail to live up to a bar set far too high for us all.

What a relief when someone smiles and reminds us that it’s okay to try again. What a gift when we are offered understanding, forbearance, another chance. What a skill to be able to fall and rise and fall and rise and keep on going even so. As the Japanese adage goes, “Fall down seven times, stand up eight.”

Meditation practice can be a perfect training ground for honing the superpowers of resilience and renewal. We rest quietly and focus our awareness for as long as our concentration lasts. Sooner or later, the mind slips into the well-worn ruts of worrying, planning, regretting, pondering. Eventually we notice we have wandered off our mark. We take a breath, forgive ourselves, and gently return to the here-and-now.

We begin again. Over and over and over. Focusing, losing focus, straying, noticing, returning. Little by little, our powers of concentration strengthen until we are focusing more and straying less. And, just as importantly, we get used to the process of trying, straying, noticing and returning. We build pathways in the brain and the body that know how to do this. Along the way we learn to accept this process as necessary. We stop beating ourselves up for living a life that sometimes steers off course.

With practice, we get better at catching ourselves when we fall - and sometimes even before, in that moment when we feel ourselves teetering on the edge. We notice before we’ve traveled an hour in the wrong direction. We notice before the unkind words make it out of our mouth. We notice before a stray thought spins us out into anxiety or ill-will. Our ability to self-correct improves - not just in a meditation but in all of life. We pause, exhale, and begin again.

As we commit to living in a world of endless renewal, we grow more forgiving not just of ourselves but the world around us, too. We grow a little less harsh in our judgements, a little more tolerant of the fallibility of others, a little more merciful in our response. We nudge ourselves toward love and humility instead of contempt and recrimination. “Welcome to the human race,” we whisper. “This could happen to anyone, including me.”

The new year is here. Let’s leave the past year behind, with a nod and a smile and a thank you. It might have been a fantastic year, or it might have been less than stellar. No worries. We’re doing the best we can, given all that we are carrying. We’re only human. Let’s begin again.