Of Berets and Beginner’s Mind
It wasn’t on my To Do list though I had been talking about it with anyone who would listen since winter dropped its gray curtain here in Manhattan: I need a new hat. The only one I have that actually works — keeps me warm and is comfy — I have been wearing for 27 years. I routinely exaggerate, except for now.
I have a hulk of a head, generous hair, and, not for lack of trying, I’ve been unlucky with hats. I have a drawerful full of them. And so, it was unexpected, during a visit to the New York Historical Society, to happen upon a small miracle. With minutes to closing, we stop at the gift shop where I find a few hats napping in a quiet corner.
I try one on, grateful that I am with Deb who is not only a keen arbiter of what looks good on anyone, but truthful in a humane way. “No,” she says to the cloche. “And it looks bad from the back.” There are a few malingering berets which I would normally pass over because with the girth of my head, it ends up looking like a pie tin sprouts from my crown. I’ve tried this style many times over the years, so why bother. But here’s one more chance to prove my point to her. I might even get her to laugh at my predicament.
I pull it on. Wait, what? It fits.
“Deb,” I call out from the corner inviting her to give it to me straight.
“It’s perfect,” she says. “It’s you.”
Was it completely coincidental that the scarf I wore harmonized with the same fog grey of the beret? It was like I crawled through a hole in the universe where everything is clicking. I lose track that I’m wearing my new beret when we head to dinner and when I stop in the loo before heading home the mirror returns a surprise — me in a not hideous hat.
But a question nags me. For decades, I have overlooked berets like remaindered fruit at my local bodega. What if I hadn’t tried it on given my extensive experience with berets and my supreme, incontrovertible knowledge that they are incompatible with my head? I would still be searching, certain there was no hat that would ever work.
When you’ve lived a good life, you can make a mistake thinking that wisdom is a sifted compilation of experience. Actually, wisdom means staying open and trying again. What didn’t work for you then may work for you now. Keep trying. Don’t assume. The cut of this beret was different than any I’d tried on before. It was more generous, even a bit puffy. What you think you know obscures the everyday gateway to possibility: Try it on.
So, it’s a hat, right? But it got me to thinking about all the other things I’ve over-learned and now leapfrog in my life, certain what fits me. I don’t like e-readers because I love a spine and a crisp page that much. Maybe it’s time to travel lighter on the subway, to always have reading at hand? Should I give that abandoned novel a second look, rap music a fair try, see if I might like radishes after all?
Decades ago, I carved this Suzuki quote into memory, and recall it now with deeper appreciation: In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few. Now, with my beret in place, I’m throwing open that musty door marked EXPERIENCE, inviting the old to grow new again.
