Willing to Be Humbled

A guest in one of our recent community calls said something that's been sitting with me for the past couple weeks.

They'd just come through their first circle with Culturally Committed, and the experience had been impactful. They were considering how their team might benefit from participating in the work, but were concerned that some might not be quite ready yet.

I want to sit with that for a moment, because it's not a small thing to say, and it's not always wrong. Some people genuinely aren't open to this work yet. Some meet it with their arms crossed, or worse, with opposition. Circle asks something specific of the people who enter it: a willingness to listen before speaking, to sit inside discomfort instead of managing it away, to begin the slow work of building real relationship with the mentors who are generous enough to share what they carry. You cannot manufacture that willingness in someone. And it isn't fair, to the mentors, to the circle itself, to bring in people who haven't yet found their way to it.

So no, I'm not going to tell you that everyone is ready. But that comment cracked something open for me, because I recognized it. Not in them, but in myself. I know that particular fear well. The fear of getting it wrong. Of saying the wrong thing, sitting the wrong way, or missing a protocol I didn't even know existed. Of causing harm I didn't intend and couldn't take back. That fear is real, and it doesn't mean something is wrong with you for having it. Vulnerability and risk are part of this work. There's no version of showing up to learn that doesn't ask you to be a little exposed.

I know that feeling intimately.

 A few years ago, a Quw'utsun Elder invited me to his property to take part in my first sweat lodge. I remember experiencing a wave of excitement laced with uncertainty: what right do I have to be here? This is not mine. He was generous enough to prepare me in advance, walking me through the protocols so I'd know how to participate in a good way. Still, sitting in circle, I felt it. He spoke and said that each of us was there for a reason. That our being gathered together in that space wasn't random. That every person present had a purpose in sharing that circle.

Afterward, I sat with him and told him honestly that I didn't understand my own purpose there. What could I possibly have to offer? He listened, and simply asked that when I figured it out, I let him know.

I drove home that night with tears streaking my cheeks, the question still sitting in my chest. A few weeks later I was talking with my friend Qwustenuxun, the Elder's nephew, and I told him the whole story. He thought about it, and then he told me something that has always stayed with me–that I was still thinking in an individualistic, Western way. That for his people, every person carries a role that supports the whole, myself included. That we're not meant to make sense of ourselves alone. As individuals, we question whether we fit. As a collective, we can watch each other for guidance and go farther together. I hadn't just been invited, he told me, my ancestors had been invited too, into that lodge to be part of something, the way it should have been all along.

That reframing changed something for me. I'd been asking the wrong question. I wasn't there to prove I'd earned a seat on my own merit. I was there because I was part of something bigger than my own individual readiness, and that shifted me from a place of guilt into a place of belonging, and eventually, action.

George often shares a story that sits right alongside that one. When he first went away to university, he hit a wall, the kind that makes you doubt whether you have what it takes at all. He called his mom, and she didn't rush to comfort him the way he expected. Instead, she reminded him of something plainer than he wanted to hear: there was a time you couldn't walk. There was a time you couldn't talk. Every single thing you now do without thinking, you learned by failing at it first, over and over, until one day you didn't have to think about it anymore. Learning was never supposed to arrive finished. It was always supposed to be practiced badly before it was practiced well.

My partner is a scientist, and last week he attended a conference in Washington, DC. He was there to meet other scientists: brilliant people, accomplished people, folks doing work adjacent to his but not quite the same. Half joking, he texted me that he felt like "the dumbest person in the room."

A few years ago I might have read that as something to fix or soften. Now I read it as something close to a gift, and I told him so. Being the least experienced person in a room means every single person around you has something to teach you that you don't yet know. That's not a deficit. That's an extraordinary position to be in, if you're willing to actually receive it, instead of spending your time worrying about what you don't know.

That's the thread running through all of these, I think. The sweat lodge. George's mom. My partner in a room full of scientists. None of them are about readiness in the way we usually use the word: credentials, comfort, certainty. They're about humility, about showing up without armor and letting yourself be the person who doesn't know yet, and about understanding that nobody expected that you’d know everything, you were never meant to arrive at any of this alone.

So when I think about that comment from our guest, I find myself wanting to gently turn the question. Maybe the real question isn't whether someone on their team has arrived at some finished state of readiness. Maybe it's whether they're willing to be humbled. Willing to feel unsure. Willing to fall down in front of people and get back up again, and to understand that they aren't walking into this to prove themselves individually. They're being invited into something collective, something bigger than any one person's readiness, and that's exactly where the belonging starts.

🧡 Kim + the CC Team