What if I’m wrong
What if I’m nothing special
What if I fucked up
What if all that is really fucking stupid
What if they have a point
What if they have a point
What if there is an exception
What more can I do
What more can I do
What’s the better way
What if they are right
What if they happen to be right
What if things have changed
What if we have to start from nothing again
What if we’re nothing, we don’t even exist, what if it’s like we’re dead
What if people don’t give a FUCK about us
What if it’s all wrong
What if it was all pointless
What if
What if
This is what literally should be going through your head
Except it should be exciting
And innocent
blablabla we all know it,
etc etc
we never live like that
it’s like gratitude
it’s OBVIOUS the moment we receive something,
it’s immensely hard once you get used to it
Your thoughts, if written down, should read pathetic, weak-kneed and self-conscious
That is the REAL beginner’s mind, obviously
No smugness there
You heard the beginner’s mind is so virtuous, then you act smug
Be curious, not smug
And of course if you’re curious — there’s nothing insecure about that
It is innocent
Innocent is not NOT bold
It’s innocent
You just do it
You just fail
You just win
It’s all innocent
It’s like a cat flying up the tree
Nothing to fail, nothing to not fail
Pure exploration
It’s all innocent
The gates and hierarchies are still there
But what you think about yourself doesn’t impact those gates or hierarchies — and your relation to them, your qualifications and your place
You fit or you don’t fit, bitch
If you fit — you fit
If you don’t fit — you don’t fit
If you think you fit and yet you don’t fit — it merely adds a little bit of embarrassment
A kind of meta-failure, if you will
Failure to know that you’d fail
Often this is the real failure you’ve so dread
Well you fail once and now you know
Then you do whatever the fuck you want
This is the right way to do it,
We usually do the reverse
We’re incurious and stubborn and reflexive and stuck in our ways and our beliefs,
and yet we’re still pathetic, insecure, self-conscious,
it should be just the opposite
your thoughts should be full of doubt and uncertainty and CURIOSITY and openness,
while otherwise — there’s really not so much to worry about
If no one told you that failure is a failure — you wouldn’t even know it’s a failure, and you wouldn’t fret it
You fail every day to be anything else but yourself. And yet there’s so much that’s possible you can’t even conceive of all the ways you’re FAILING to be something else
Therefore you’re actually quite ignorant of what a big failure you are
It’s only once you made up your mind that something is a failure — that you know it’s a failure — and dread it and quail
While nothing has changed,
You still either fit or don’t fit
You’ll still either manage to make yourself fit or not
So this is the true meaning of beginner’s mind
Everyone has “beginner’s mind” WHEN they are a beginner, obviously
The point is to have it the rest of the time
And the real difficulty is to have it about the ENTIRE COLLECTION OF ATTRIBUTES that CONSTITUTES “yourself”
And then of course it hurts the ego
Except it’s the opposite — it’s your unwillingness to ACCEPT WHAT YOU ARE — that strengthens the ILLUSION of yourself that is the ego,
and it’s this illusion that is the true source of insecurity and weakness and feebleness