Difficulty at the Beginning

"Sucking at something is the first step towards being sort of good at something" — Jake The Dog

Every year, around my birthday, I pull a reading from the I Ching and let it play out over a full calendar year.

Last year, I pulled hexagram number 3 — “Chun,” or “Difficulty at the beginning.”

The metaphor used for this passage is a blade of grass pushing upward through soil…

After emerging from the seed, the young blade of grass has no idea how far it must push before it can break the surface to receive sunlight. All it knows is that right now, it’s still dark — it must keep pushing. Giving up would mean certain death.

Every beginning hurts. It’s not a flaw in the process — it is the process.

The hardest part is that it never feels that way from the inside.

A Year of Mistakes

One of the most difficult beginnings I faced this year was my venture into woodworking. I’ve been building furniture and other things for the house — shelves, tables, cabinets… and other things.

I spent a whole year trying different techniques, different finishes, and taking on more ambitious projects each time.

I wasted a ton of time and resources. I applied finishes poorly and had to painstakingly sand it all off and start over. I cut boards too short. I drilled pilot holes in the wrong places. I can see glue marks on my seams. I split wood by driving screws too close to the edge. I got measurements wrong and built shelves that don’t fit the space they were intended…

Each of these mistakes felt like a setback. A failure.

I’d stand over a ruined piece thinking about the hours of work I’d wasted. I mentally tallied the cost of lumber I’d destroyed and stewed over the growing pile of evidence that I had no business doing this stuff.

And yet…

A year later, I know what finishes to use and which ones to stay away from. I know why it’s worth spending so much time sanding upfront. I know how to hide my screw holes and keep glue from showing between joints. I know how to make sure my corners are square. I waste less wood.

The only way I know these things is because I’ve already gotten all of them wrong.

Don’t Over Commit

This hexagram also comes with a second important warning — it says that “nothing should be undertaken.”

My first instinct here was that this contradicts the whole point. If difficulty at the beginning is the price of growth, shouldn’t you be starting as many things as possible? More beginnings = more growth… right?

Wrong. Beginnings are expensive. Each one demands your full attention, patience, and willingness to be bad at something. You only have so much of that to go around.

The young grass seedling is only doing one thing — it’s pushing up. It’s not trying to establish deep roots or produce new leaves. Its only chance at getting through this difficult beginning is to focus on one thing and one thing only.

I have many interests — several of them still require a great deal of being bad at them for a while first… building custom electronics, plant tissue culture, Spanish… just to name a few.

At some point this year, I had to start putting things on pause. Too many beginnings.

Too many new blades of grass, all stalled an inch under the soil.

This is exactly what the I Ching warns about.

Beginnings compound, but not in the direction you’d hope. Each one drains energy from the others. When that energy is split in four different directions, none of them have enough push to break the surface.

There’s an old Zen adage that fits well here:

“The hunter who chases 2 rabbits catches none.”

It’s not that you can’t pursue more than one thing. It’s that you can’t begin more than one thing at a time — or at least, not many.

Beginnings need to be rationed.

Seek Helpers

The last piece in this reading states — “it furthers one to appoint helpers.”

Find people who’ve already done what you’re trying to do, and learn from them — not a novel concept here… But what I learned this year was that there’s more in this piece of advice than merely finding someone to teach you a new technique.

In Zen, the teacher-student relationship is considered essential — but not in the way you might expect. A Zen teacher isn’t there to transmit any particular technique.

In fact, the relationship is often deliberately frustrating — the teacher’s job is less about giving the student answers and more about interrupting the stories the student keeps telling themselves about the practice.

I don’t have a formal mentor in woodworking. But I did ask my dad for help with a few projects.

He showed me his method of squaring things off, the importance of gluing seams, and how to operate a nail gun.

While all of those were useful tips, there was a lesson I don’t even think he knows he gave me in those days we spent in the workshop together.

Every once in a while, I would drive a crooked nail with the nail gun. This punched a fresh hole in the outside of my piece and left it with a permanent scar. As someone who’s a bit of a perfectionist, mistakes like these were aggravating. How could I make such a stupid, costly mistake? Why can’t I be more careful?

But each time, my dad would just shrug and reach for the pliers to pull it out. “Don’t worry about it,” he’d say.

Reflecting back, those shrugs did more for me than any particular technique he passed along. He knew mistakes like these were inevitable — he’d made them all before, too. But he’d long since stopped making them mean anything.

The Cost of Admission

A year later, I’m still bad at woodworking. But I’m bad in a different way now.

I no longer ruin pieces by trying to speed through the miserable sanding stage as quickly as I can. I can pick a finish for a project without spending an hour and a half on YouTube first. I know which mistakes are recoverable and which ones mean starting over. Some of my corners are square. Most of my glue lines don’t show.

None of this is skill… not exactly. It’s a reflection of the mistakes I’ve made over the past year.

The trap of difficulty at the beginning is that making these mistakes feels a lot like failure at the time.

It’s why so many people quit in the early stages of learning something new.

But mistakes are merely the cost of admission.

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