We become someone who can do something by doing it.

At one point, we were someone who could do nothing.

All of us.

We all started as a tiny little creature, curled up and barely recognisable as something that would grow into an adult human.

And then, gradually, we did things.

Very slowly, at first.

Connecting movement to ourselves. Realising that this thing in front of my eyes is part of me. Realising I can move it.

Realising that that large moving thing I see now is the same one as the one I saw yesterday. A parent, although we don’t understand that until much later.

At one point, I was someone who could do nothing. And so were you.

We play as a child, if we’re lucky. Bouncing around the world learning. Not thinking about learning, just allowing it to happen to us. Constantly noticing and adjusting.

It’s remarkable any of us can walk, especially given how hard it has been for engineers to programme that dynamic shifting of weight and balance into robots. Let alone a tiny creature who doesn’t understand any of the concepts...

Or at least that’s what it looks like.

The truth is it’s partly because she doesn’t understand the concepts that she just tries things.

That’s the beauty of naivety.

And then, in our lives, something happens.

I’ve heard several people recently talk about their journeys with creativity. First, when young, actively creative. Followed by loss of creativity and obsession with perfectionism or fear of judgment. Followed by, as an adult, rediscovering creativity as a way – as my friend Jo Hunter might say – to discover and harness the power of agency, vulnerability and community.

One of the great joys of the seven or so years of doing the work that I do, and particularly of doing it on myself, has been to rediscover some of the beautiful naivety of childhood. Rediscovering that I can just make things up.

It isn’t the same as childhood, although in some ways it looks like it. (That’s the pre/trans fallacy.)

It’s more than that. It’s a rediscovering of the power of just trying things, of remembering that I was once someone who could do literally nothing. And I learned. And so it’s ok, it’s possible and in fact it’s exciting to learn things again. To just bounce around.

It is, in its own way, just as glorious as the naivety of childhood, because as a rational adult returning to play we have to transcend and include the fear. The child doesn't need courage to learn to walk because she isn't afraid. But I need courage to do the things that I have stopped doing. Because I am afraid.

Ten years ago, leading meditations felt like something for others. For my mum and dad, maybe, with their years of meditative practice. For Tibetan and Vietnamese people I had seen speak about it at Rigpa or the Order of Interbeing.

But not for me. I didn’t know how to do it.

And then, at some point, that shifted. As I let go. As I transcended and included my childhood naivety and my educated, rational caution and fear.

I find myself reflecting to clients sometimes how if you had told me ten years ago that I would be someone who comfortably and confidently creates meditations in the moment for other people, I wouldn’t have believed you.

I thought they were things for other people. For people who knew how. For people who were really present, for people who were something.

In a way, it is for people who are something.

But, as I’ve written before, one of the ways to answer the question ‘Who am I to create meditations in the moment?’ is to notice that I am not that. Not until I have done it.

Now, if creating meditations in the moment is something only for people who are something, then by creating them in the moment I become that something. Whatever it is.

I wonder, sometimes, if any of the work I do matters or makes a difference. If I’m really helping. Or if the things I’ve learned are just a stage I’m going through, that everyone will go through in their own time. Not in a self-pitying way – well, not much – more in a genuinely curious way.

Would it have been possible for me to learn the things I have learned earlier in my life? Would I have listened?

I’m not sure I would have understood, at some of the other stages of my life, the things I have written in this article.

But there are some things that I am as sure as I can be helped me to shift through the phases of development and learning that I have noticed in my life.

Taking perspective on myself and the things that happen to me.

And taking action, even when I ‘don’t know how’. Even when I'm afraid.

Especially when I'm afraid.

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This is the latest in a series of articles written using the 12-Minute Method: write for twelve minutes, proof read once with tiny edits and then post online. 

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