Monday, September 21, 2015

Value ignorance as much as knowledge

Offer yourself to the world—your energies, your gifts, your visions, your heart—with open-hearted generosity. But understand that when you live that way you will soon learn how little you know and how easy it is to fail. To grow in love and service, you, I, all of us, must value ignorance as much as knowledge and failure as much as success. I know this is ironic advice..., but clinging to what you already know and do well is the path to an unlived life. So, cultivate beginner’s mind, walk straight into your not knowing, and take the risk of failing and falling again and again, then getting up again and again to learn. That’s the path to a life lived large in service of love, truth, and justice.

~ Parker J. Palmer, commencement address at Naropa University, Boulder, Colorado, May 10, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaOFkumhcCU

No comments:

Post a Comment

Your comment will be published (unless inappropriate), but if you want a reply, please send your comment directly to george@naturalawareness. You may also send questions or comments to me directly if you do not want them published in the blog.