Being a Beginner & Rehabilitation

It it great to be a beginner. It brings us back to the ground. It reminds us that there are always things we don't know, no matter how good we have become at some other things.

It gives me more headache to plan and shop for food than to write a paper or give a speech. I am more clueless in the supermarket than at a professional conference or a board room. Now I understand why Mao sent the "intellectual youths" to the countryside to be "re-educated." This bike trip, even before the first mile, has been a sobering re-education.

It is embarrassing to admit, but here are a few "first" for me in the past few days:

Getting On The Road

It's been two weeks since graduation. Life seems to have gotten busier, with back-to-back travels (LA, San Fran, NYC, Boston), moving, and trying to hit the road soon.

I am now across the street from Hampshire College, making final preparations for the bike trip heading west to San Francisco. Only now has the enormity of the challenge sunk in. It is a similar feeling as when I first arrived in the US four years ago: starting all over, again. Nothing from the past matters here, because it is a different game.

I didn't really know what I was signing up for when I decided to bike across the country by myself. And this is part of the fun. I know I must get on the road, because one could spend the entire summer doing research and practice, and still feel under-prepared. Things will work itself out.

A Not-Yet-Permanent Damage

Looking through the courses I've taken over the past few years, suddenly, I feel a deep worry. It is as if something is missing, but I couldn't locate the source. But, well, what could go wrong? Indeed, I've learn so much from diverse disciplines, in politics, economics, history, philosophy, logic, law, anthropology, biology, geology, and physics.

Until these words in Darwin’s autobiography reminded me of what is missing: