INSPIRATION

The Audacity of Youth

How the beginner’s mind won the Biden inauguration

Like most of you, I had never heard of Amanda Gorman until January 20, 2021. But at Joe Biden’s inauguration her voice broke through the din like a clarion call.

At just 22 years old, Gorman became the youngest inaugural poet in the nation’s history when she recited her piece “The Hill We Climb” before Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and the rest of the world.

And what a coming out party it was. After four years of noise, bluster, and obfuscation, her voice resounded with joy, clarity, and hope for a significantly brighter future ahead.

But her words alone are not what stirred so many. It was her mindset. It was, more specifically, her beginner’s mind on display for all the world to see.

It was her beginner’s mind that made her curious about poetry in the first place. It was her beginner’s mind that convinced her that she could be a writer, not just a reader. And most importantly it was her beginner’s mind that led her to write this:

“And yet the dawn is ours before we knew it.
Somehow we do it.
Somehow we weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken, but simply unfinished.”

It has been so easy to give into the notion that the last few years broke us apart for good. That the deep divide between “left” and “right,” “blue” and “red,” or “liberal” and “conservative” cannot possibly be bridged.

But that’s not how a beginner sees it. That’s not how Gorman sees it. A beginner asks not, “What do we do now that we’re irreparably broken?”, but rather, “How will we bridge the divide?”

A beginner approaches this time in our history like they approach everything, with curiosity. What is it that remains unfinished? Why are we so quick to take sides? Why can’t we empathize with the other’s point of view?

A beginner’s mind is infectious. It spurs us to believe, to follow, and ultimately to act on what it finds when it dares to ask the question, “What if?” Gorman dared to ask that question in front of the world.

At the inauguration Gorman did what the best thinkers do, she raised the question while also providing the answer:

“We seek harm to none and harmony for all.
Let the globe, if nothing else, say this is true.
That even as we grieved, we grew.
That even as we hurt, we hoped.
That even as we tired, we tried.
That we’ll forever be tied together, victorious.
Not because we will never again know defeat, but because we will never again sow division.
Scripture tells us to envision that everyone shall sit under their own vine and fig tree, and no one shall make then afraid.
If we’re to live up to our own time, then victory won’t lie in the blade, but in all the bridges we’ve made.”

How audacious. How inspiring. What a way to start a healing process that will be anything but easy. But start it we must, with our beginner’s mind fully engaged.