Learning Out Loud

It seems like ideas that stick are those that are tested by feedback. I have often been afraid of feedback. Still am, actually. I think it's maybe because I fear others would agree with my worst thoughts about myself, and one of the main thoughts that hinders me from sharing is the one I've dealt with since I was a child: "You're not as smart as others." Oddly enough, maybe it's more true than not.

But I want to practice learning out loud, to see if what I'm taking in, what is shaping me, aligns with Reality. And there is nothing more realigning than feedback. At some point, theory becomes useless if it is not applied in the field. There are, after all, two ways of knowing , and we need both (ironically) in order to "live a three-dimensioned life," as Wendell Berry challenged himself to do as a poet.

Other reasons I have been afraid of sharing is because I've doubted I'm a writer and I fear that others will agree with my doubts. But here I am writing anyway. I have doubted these thoughts are worth sharing. Maybe they are, maybe they're not. But here I am, sharing anyway.

I remember my wife telling me some time ago a phrase she read: "Do it scared." That phrase has stuck with me. Courage comes not when we no longer feel the fear, but when we feel the fear and jump in the fray anyway.

So I'm sharing these ideas here, however big or small they may be, in order to grow in my courage and craft. May these little ideas, like intimations – like seeds – grow something bigger than the thoughts themselves.