Naïveté
Do you want to do something so badly that your passion for it burns within your core?
Perhaps you would absolutely love to start your dream consulting business, but you are currently (and always have) worked for someone else.
Maybe you want to write the next great American novel, but your last written work was in your creative writing class at the local library.
Or, you want to run the New York City Marathon, but you are 50/30/1000 — 50 years old, 30 pounds overweight, and 1000 miles from the Big Apple in rural Georgia.
When you share your dream with friends and family, how do they react? Unfortunately, often times well-meaning family members will offer you extra fuel for your resistance; rather than the cheerleading that you were looking for. Instead of supporting, encouraging, or helping you, they add to your “but” by reminding you of your lack of knowledge/experience/understanding about what it is you wish to undertake. You are just plain naïve, and they are just trying to help.
In contemporary society, we understand naïve to mean foolish, easily taken advantage of, or lacking in wisdom. Interestingly, the root word, naïveté, comes from old French, and means one’s inborn or native character. Moreover, many wise, non-fools have written on the importance of naïveté. Consider the following:
“You study, you learn, but you guard the original naïveté. It has to be within you, as desire for drink is within the drunkard or love is within the lover.” Henri Matisse
“In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.” Shunryu Suzuki
“Knowledge can be a subtle curse. When we learn about the world, we also learn all the reasons why the world cannot be changed. We get used to our failures and imperfections. We become numb to the possibilities of something new. In fact, the only way to remain creative over time — to not be undone by our expertise — is to experiment with ignorance, to stare at things we don’t fully understand . . . we see the most when we are on the outside looking in.” Jonah Lehrer
Could naïveté, beginner’s mind, or ignorance be something to embrace, rather than fear, next time a “yeah-but-er” tells you why you cannot do something?
I don’t know about you, but I’m with Matisse!