The Beginner’s Path
Welcome to this week’s Collective, an invitation to rediscover curiosity. When was the last time you did something without needing to be good at it? This issue is about finding joy in humility, the fresh air of not knowing.
~ The Beginner’s Path ~
Yesterday, I tried something new. Nothing spectacular, just a small thing I hadn’t done before. I road a couple of new trails I hadn’t ridden before. I felt unsure, maybe even a little overly cautious.
Yet underneath the hesitation and clumsiness was a quiet excitement I hadn’t felt in a long time. A new sense of adventure. Exploring the unknown.
To begin again, so to speak, is both humbling and renewing. It reminds us that growth requires letting go of mastery and rediscovering our edges. Adulthood resists this — we cling to competence, to the comfort of being “good” at things. But in doing so, we lose touch with the energy that once made learning feel alive.
The joy of being a beginner again comes from openness. It is curiosity without the burden of expertise, discovery without the need to prove anything. When we stop performing and start paying attention, we notice how much of life still waits to be learned.
True learning is not accumulation. It is humility — the willingness to say, “I don’t know, but I want to find out.”
Where might you begin again?
“First Breath After Coma” ~ Explosions in the Sky
Instrumental, dynamic, and full of quiet courage. A song that rises like morning light and carries the spirit of starting again—uncertain, hopeful, and alive.
The Lion Tracker’s Guide to Life ~ Boyd Varty
Part memoir, part spiritual field guide, this short book invites readers to approach life like a tracker — patient, observant, willing to follow faint signs without knowing exactly where they lead.
Varty writes, “I don’t know where I’m going, but I know exactly how to get there.”
It is a perfect companion for rediscovering the courage and joy of beginning again.
Podcast: The Art of Manliness, Ep. 677 — The Value of Learning New Skills in Adulthood
Tom Vanderbilt, author of Beginners: The Joy and Transformative Power of Lifelong Learning, explores what happens when adults take up new skills.
“We shall not cease from exploration
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.”
~ T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets
Try starting something this week where you are not the expert. Pick up a skill you’ve never mastered—sketching, cold plunges, bird calls, or a simple guitar riff. Notice how it feels to learn again. Beginners feel awkward because they are alive to growth. That feeling is the pulse of being human.
Thank you for reading The Sunday Evening Collective.
The longer we live, the more tempting it becomes to stay within the bounds of what we already know. But our edges are where the light gets in.
The joy of being a beginner is not about erasing experience, but about allowing experience to make curiosity possible again.
As always, keep chasing your kangaroo.
Chase The Kangaroo 
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