The German polymath, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, famously stated, “Aller Anfang is schwer”, literally “Every beginning is difficult”, which I would, with much more verbosity, translate as “Each new beginning is fraught with difficulties”.

Why is starting up/doing new so difficult? Certainly as a child, everything may not be difficult, but it is at once new, and so children, if unafraid, are most willing to try the new thing — vocalizing, verbalizing, then talking, and ambulation (both on the floor, and then upright) — then improving and mastering until the thing is common and no longer new.

Once we are older, the new proves more interesting/difficult. There are in essence two types of new/change, those that we explicitly undertake — new beginnings, new relationships chosen/sought out, fundamental changes to the how and what of us, and then the new that is thrust on us than chosen freely. Each has its set of difficulties and challenges.

Looking at that which is thrust upon us first and using myself as an example: in my work life of more than 37 years every job I have held has been with a company/business/insitution that has reorganized itself  — and therefore me and what I do — within 18 months of my joining the company. Bosses I signed up to work for now working elsewhere, activities I signed up to do now no longer being done or no longer being done by me, businesses changing their core raison d’etre and thereby the work I do. Sometimes with a better boss, but mostly not.

By my estimation, I have had six different career paths (as we now say) since I started working, and each has been in part as a response to those changing situations. Not so much making lemonade from lemons, as a personal response to the fruit offered, a choice to embrace or reject, so that what is might be initially negative can become at least a pivot point into the next thing.

In point of fact, what troubles us about the new –whether it is thrust on us or freely chosen or sought out — is that we, as individuals or institutions, always enter into the new with insufficient knowledge. Organizations seek to renew themselves for reasons — from economic challenges, an inability to perform efficiently, stagnation, among many of the possible reasons — but these reasons all come with knowledge insufficient to promise success or even a good outcome.

Similarly, individuals, even if we do the new as an experiment, cannot know with certainty the outcome or whether our actions bring fruit or famine.

With all of that, the new, new thing, new activity, new job, new relationship, brings with it at least the possibility of openness and possibility, a starting again, the feeling that “I am done with that, now I can start again”. This, even with insufficient knowledge or a knowing of the environment that opens before us, can be liberating if we are able to enter into it with fear or lack of security. Only then can our new beginnings be less difficult or the difficulty ours to manage.