One of the great ironies of aging is that the older we get, the more important it becomes to become a beginner again.
We now know that novelty, curiosity, and learning are foundational ingredients for a longer, healthier, happier life. The brain loves new pathways. The soul does too. Which is why people in their 50s, 60s, and 70s who continue experimenting—whether with pickleball, pottery, piano, poetry, or Portuguese—often seem more alive than people half their age who have become experts in repetition.
Lately, I’ve realized I’m a beginner at fiction.
To be honest, I’ve long viewed fiction as a mildly respectable waste of time. I probably start one novel a year and finish one every five years. My natural habitat is nonfiction: psychology, spirituality, business, wisdom studies, mortality, purpose. Give me Viktor Frankl over vampires any day.
But then something interesting happened. In the same week, two MEA alums separately handed me the same novel: “Theo of Golden.”
At some point, coincidence starts to feel like curriculum.
The book could just as easily have been called “About Face” because it’s fundamentally about seeing and being seen. About how we lead with our faces. About how a life changes when someone truly notices us. Beneath the plot is a deeper meditation on creative generosity, purposeful living, and the invisible threads of kindness that quietly bind us to one another.
Reading it reminded me of Wordsworth’s phrase about “the little, nameless, unremembered acts of kindness and love,” a phrase that pops up in the book.
That line has always felt like the hidden curriculum of an MEA workshop.
Yes, people come to MEA looking for reinvention, clarity, transition, purpose, and community. But what often changes them most are the small moments: the hand on a shoulder after a difficult conversation, the stranger who becomes a confidant over breakfast, the person who says, “Me too,” at exactly the right moment.
Moral beauty rarely announces itself with fireworks. More often, it arrives disguised as attention.
And maybe that’s one reason becoming a beginner matters so much in midlife. Beginners are still capable of surprise. Experts often stop noticing. Beginners still look up. They still stumble into wonder. They still allow themselves to be changed. They love traveling in a foreign country and culture for all these reasons.
Apparently, at this stage of life, I’m finally becoming a beginner at fiction.
Which may really mean I’m becoming a beginner at being seen.
-Chip