What is a good beginning? It’s private, it’s slow, it’s a dawning of an idea, a change of mind, a different choice. It starts as an itch so slight as to think we have imagined this idea, impulse or shadow thought. Then it takes root, germinates, and slowly if not fussed with comes into a slight outwardly shift. It looks like eating one more piece of fruit or veg. It means you walk  the dog an extra block. You might smile at that nice neighbor when they look your way. They are small openings to something new, something good and something that makes you feel well, vulnerable and connected to yourself and to others. I would say those are good beginnings. Small delicate shafts of light that emanate from our soul outward. 

Bad beginnings come from dogma. They are public, dramatic, motivated outside of us in waves of shame, pressure, and a need to fit in. They bark at us, belittle who we are instead of nurture, they are rigid and petty. Bad beginnings are done to mold us into something, submitting us to external rules that make us smaller, quieter and foreign to ourselves. 

Flowers don’t look at each other as they start to bloom, nor leaves stealing glances at what the others are doing prior to unfolding. They are pushed by nature, internal systems that signal that it is time to unfold, time to bloom, time to push open into the world. This, when we do beginnings right, is how they truly work. True change comes when it is too painful not to make that change that intimidates us but are pushed to do; when the avoidance, the collateral in not doing the “thing” is greater than the risk of change; when the uncomfortableness of not changing is your internal signal, your intuition, your soul pushing you to bloom, to create, to become. 

Think about what small nudging in your soul you have been ignoring,  pushing down and away because it is scary, you don’t have time, you don’t know enough, are not enough and don’t feel ready… There is no such thing as comfortable change. We are NEVER ready. We just have to step out into that darkness and scratch that itch, follow that impulse, embrace that idea and lean into it with action. I rarely do this without boat loads of trepidation, but I do it, nonetheless. Nothing changes unless we do something different. Thinking and planning are all good but only for a short time if they are not followed up by an action, a small step or stumble. Thinking and planning past the time for action is just procrastinating, only it sounds better. 

The point of a good beginning is that like a flower or a leaf they open to the world in slow, steady actions of growth. For us it is the same: it is us opening ourselves up to the world and bringing forth our skills, creativity, heart, and quirk to be part of a community being wholly who we are not who we think we should be. Take that internal que to unfold into healthy living, into creative pursuits, to community organizing, to listening to your soul’s whispers like your life depends on it… because it does. Those whispers are where all good beginnings lay. 

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