The Lifelong Beginner
Poetry and Prose by Britt Wolfe
I have stopped chasing mastery.
The finish line keeps moving anyway.
Every time I think I’ve arrived,
life hands me a new language
and tells me to start again.
So I do.
I begin.
Again and again,
with both hands trembling,
with eyes too wide,
with the humility of someone
who has finally learned
that beginning is not failure—
it’s faith.
I am done pretending
that certainty is strength.
Perfection is a cul-de-sac.
Growth lives in the unmarked roads,
the detours,
the unflattering first attempts.
I want to be forever becoming—
always a student of the moment,
always a beginner
at this impossible art of being human.
I want to learn new names for joy,
new shapes for courage,
new ways to be wrong
without being ruined by it.
Let me be clumsy.
Let me be curious.
Let me never mistake comfort for wisdom.
I don’t need to be an expert.
I need to be awake—
to keep reaching toward what I don’t yet know,
to keep beginning,
to keep beginning,
to keep beginning.
Because the truth is,
every time I start over,
I meet myself again—
a little softer,
a little braver,
a little more infinite
than before.
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Poetry Anthologies by Britt Wolfe
