Never Make The Mistake of Underestimating A “Newbie”

I don’t make a habit of underestimating anyone if I can help it (and I can usually help it), and most of you here don’t likely have such a habit either…. but it is still easy -especially given many of the interactions we all watch and sometimes have on the internet- to forget that “not underestimating” does not merely consist of “not categorically writing off the capability and/or insight of”. I would like share my most recent (of many) experience(s) that illustrates the way that we may sometimes learn from those we are teaching.

There is a widely used concept that I have been trying to in some ways rewrite or improve upon for years now to better reflect the perspectives of my own tradition. I didn’t so much have trouble with the concept itself as with how to give one portion of it a label that was as succinct as the others. In using this concept for myself, the label didn’t matter — I knew what I meant. Recently, however, it has become relevant, as I am about to teach that concept to my class of Seekers. The concept, presented in one of its more standard formats, was covered briefly in their current assigned reading. One of my students came to me, saying she had a question about one specific part of said concept. Naturally, I told her she was not only allowed to but encouraged to ask.

She asked me, “Why does this part seem to be so out of balance with the others, especially in terms of which part of it is -I can’t help but feel like this is the only way to say it- fixated on as the key phrase? That’s the smallest part of it and so superficial. Unless I’m totally misunderstanding something here (and tell me if I am) this part of [the concept] is about TRUST. And titling it [the typical label] makes it sound like it’s about paranoia!” I was both astonished and delighted — In what she mistakenly took to be her own ignorant confusion, not only had she penetrated directly to the heart of the issue I myself had long ago taken with the typical version (thus spurring me to develop an adaption more suited to our tradition in the first place)…. she had also unknowingly provided me with the succinct key word with which to label the portion of the concept which was, in our tradition’s version, most different.

The instant that she said it, I wondered why I had not thought of that ages ago. I’ve concluded that it was nothing more but nothing less than having had the conventional version drummed into my head for years already, while my student has not. It is the first time she has ever encountered the concept. So, you see, sometimes it is not merely that seekers (your own students or more generally speaking) can have insights into the Craft despite being new to studying it/them….. it is that, in some cases, they may have those insights because they are new to it.

And it never hurts for us ‘elder witches’ to take a look at the Craft we know so well through the eyes of the ones we are striving to teach. If we do so, we may just learn something new ourselves.