Chapter 15: Returning to the Beginning

A Year Into the New Role

Agnieszka, the ward clerk we met in the first chapter, has had two eventful years. After her disappointment over the coordinator post, she learned to see how her hospital actually worked. She began to speak once in each meeting, to make her contributions visible and to suggest a monthly update from the ward clerks to the managers. When the next coordinator post was advertised, the managers already knew her work. This time she prepared carefully for the interview, and she got the job.

Now, a year into her new role, Agnieszka faces a different kind of difficulty. She is responsible for the administrative staff of three wards. Her days are filled with schedules, staffing problems, meetings and emails. She is good at the job, and her managers are pleased. But she has noticed something that troubles her. She is tired in a way she never was before. She feels far away from the patients and the nurses, whose daily work used to give her own work meaning. Some mornings, she wonders why she wanted this job at all.

One evening, sorting through an old drawer at home, Agnieszka found a letter she had written to herself fourteen years earlier, on her first day as a ward clerk. A friend had suggested the idea. In the letter, she had written why she wanted to work in a hospital: because her own mother had been cared for kindly in one, because she wanted to do work that mattered to people at difficult moments and because she liked bringing order to chaos so that others could do their work well.

Reading the letter, Agnieszka felt something shift. She realized that she had drifted, gradually and without noticing, away from the reasons she had begun. The new role was not wrong for her. But she had let its daily demands crowd out the purpose that had brought her into hospital work in the first place. She needed, in a sense, to return to her beginning.

Machiavelli wrote about this kind of renewal in one of the most interesting chapters of the Discourses. He was writing about republics and other human institutions, but his idea applies remarkably well to working lives, to teams and to anyone who has drifted from their original purpose.

Bringing Things Back to Their Beginnings

In the first chapter of the third book of the Discourses, Machiavelli observes that all things in the world have a limit to their life. But those that last longest, he says, are those that are often brought back to their beginnings. He is speaking especially of institutions, such as republics and religious orders, but he presents it as a general truth (Discourses, Book 3, chapter 1).

His reasoning is this. Every institution that lasts must have had some goodness at its beginning, by which it first gained its reputation and its strength. Over time, this original goodness tends to be corrupted. People forget why things were done. Rules become empty habits. Small compromises accumulate. Unless something happens to bring the institution back to its original purpose and spirit, it will gradually decay and eventually die (Discourses, Book 3, chapter 1).

Machiavelli describes two ways in which this renewal can happen. One is through some external shock, a crisis or disaster that forces people to remember what really matters. The other, which he clearly prefers, is through internal wisdom: through good rules that regularly call people back to first principles, or through good individuals whose example reminds others of what the institution was meant to be (Discourses, Book 3, chapter 1). He suggests that such renewals should happen regularly, so that the corruption never goes too far.

This idea fits Agnieszka's situation closely. Her working life had begun with a clear goodness: a wish to help people at difficult moments and to bring order so that others could care for them. Over the years, and especially in her new role, that original purpose had been gradually covered by the daily demands of the job. She had not done anything wrong. But she had drifted. Finding her old letter was a small internal renewal: a reminder of her beginning that called her back to it.

The same is true of teams and workplaces. A team that was formed for a clear purpose can, over years, become absorbed in routines, meetings and procedures that have little to do with that purpose. A workplace that began with a strong spirit can gradually lose it. Machiavelli's insight is that such drift is natural, and that the remedy is regular return to beginnings: asking, again and again, "Why did we start doing this? What was it for?"

The Trap of the Good Old Days

There is an important difference between returning to beginnings and simply longing for the past. Machiavelli was very aware of this difference. In the preface to the second book of the Discourses, he observes that people always praise ancient times and criticize the present, and not always with good reason. Old people, he notes, praise the times of their youth and complain about the present, partly because they remember the good and forget the bad, and partly because their own desires and abilities have changed, so that the world seems worse to them when in fact they themselves have changed (Discourses, Book 2, preface).

Machiavelli does not dismiss all comparison between past and present. Sometimes, he says, the past really was better in certain respects, and it is right to say so, so that the present can learn. But he warns against the automatic belief that everything was better before. That belief, he suggests, is often a trick of memory and of our own changing perspective.

This warning is very useful in working life. Many workplaces contain people who say, "Things were better in the old days." Sometimes they are right: perhaps the old days had better training, more time with customers or a stronger sense of shared purpose. But often they are remembering selectively, forgetting the problems of the past and blaming the present for changes in themselves.

Returning to beginnings, in Machiavelli's sense, is not about going back to the old days. It is about recovering the original purpose and spirit of an endeavour and applying them in the present, with present tools and present knowledge. Agnieszka does not need to go back to being a ward clerk. She needs to bring the purpose that made her a good ward clerk into her new role as a coordinator.

The question to ask is not "How can we make things the way they used to be?" but "What was the good at the heart of this when it began, and how can we serve that good now?" The first question looks backward and often leads to frustration. The second looks forward, guided by what was best in the past.

Agnieszka Returns to Her Beginning

After finding her letter, Agnieszka thought about how she could bring her original purpose into her new role. She realized that she had stopped visiting the wards, because her office was on another floor and her days were full of meetings. She had stopped seeing the patients and nurses whose work her own work was meant to support.

She made a few changes. She began to walk through each of her three wards every morning, for just ten minutes, greeting the clerks, nurses and, where appropriate, patients. She asked the clerks what was making their work difficult, and she made solving those problems her first priority each day. She reminded herself that her schedules and staffing plans were not ends in themselves. They were ways of making sure that patients were cared for well at difficult moments, just as her mother had been.

She also brought the idea of return to her team. At a meeting with the ward clerks, she shared, a little shyly, the letter she had written on her first day, and asked each of them to remember why they had chosen to work in a hospital. Several shared stories. One clerk had been inspired by a nurse who had cared for her grandfather. Another simply liked helping people find their way. The meeting was moving, and it changed the atmosphere among the team.

Agnieszka's tiredness did not vanish, because her job is genuinely demanding. But it changed in quality. She no longer felt that she was drifting through meaningless tasks. She felt, again, that her work mattered to people at difficult moments. "I did not need a new job," she says. "I needed to remember why I wanted this one. The letter was a little thing. But it brought me back to the beginning, and the beginning was the best part of me."

Agnieszka now writes a short letter to herself every year, on the anniversary of her first day. In it, she writes why she still does the work, what she has learned and what she hopes for the year ahead. It has become her own regular renewal, the kind of internal return to beginnings that Machiavelli believed keeps things alive.

Ishaan and the Animals

Ishaan is fifty-two and works as a vet in a practice that treats pets and farm animals. He became a vet because he loved animals from childhood, and he spent his early years in the profession with great enthusiasm. But over twenty-five years, the work has changed. There is more paperwork, more pressure to see many cases quickly and more difficult conversations with owners about costs. Ishaan has become tired and a little cynical. He sometimes feels more like a businessman than a vet.

Last year, a young student came to the practice for work experience. She was seventeen and wanted to become a vet. She followed Ishaan for two weeks, watching everything with wide eyes and asking endless questions. On her last day, she told him that watching him calm a frightened dog before an examination had been the most wonderful thing she had ever seen. "You made it feel safe," she said. "That is what I want to do."

Ishaan was surprised by how much her words moved him. He realized that he had stopped noticing the moments that had once filled him with joy: calming a frightened animal, seeing a sick one recover, helping a worried owner understand what was happening. These moments were still there, every day. But he had been so focused on the pressures of the job that he had stopped seeing them. The student's fresh eyes had brought him back to his own beginning.

Ishaan made some small changes. He began to take a moment, after each successful treatment, to notice what he had done and why it mattered. He offered to take more work-experience students, because their enthusiasm renewed his own. He talked with the other vets in the practice about the pressures they all felt, and they agreed on a few changes to protect time for the parts of the work they most valued, such as longer appointments for frightened or very ill animals.

Machiavelli wrote that renewal can come from the example of good individuals who remind others of what an institution was meant to be. For Ishaan, that individual was a seventeen-year-old student. Her example reminded him of the vet he had wanted to be. "She thought I was showing her how to be a vet," he says. "Actually, she was showing me."

Rosalie and the Team That Forgot Its Purpose

Rosalie is thirty and works in a team of six youth workers at a community centre. The team was set up eight years ago to provide a safe place for young people in the neighbourhood after school, with activities, homework help and someone to talk to. Rosalie joined three years ago, attracted by the team's reputation for genuinely caring about young people.

Recently, Rosalie has noticed that the team has drifted. Much of their time is now spent on reports for the organizations that fund them, on meetings and on managing the building. Activities have become routine. The weekly team meeting, once a time to discuss the young people and their needs, has become a list of administrative tasks. Some young people have stopped coming. The team members are tired and a little discouraged.

Rosalie suggested to her manager that the team take a half day away from the centre to think about its purpose. The manager agreed. At the meeting, Rosalie asked one of the founding members of the team, a woman who had been there from the beginning, to tell the story of why the team had been created. She described the neighbourhood eight years earlier, the young people who had nowhere to go and the simple idea at the heart of the team: that every young person deserved at least one adult who knew their name and believed in them.

The story had a powerful effect. The team realized how far they had drifted from that simple idea. They decided to make some changes. They would begin each weekly meeting by talking about the young people, not about tasks, with each worker sharing one young person they were concerned about or proud of. They would reduce some routine activities and create more time for individual conversations. And they would ask the young people themselves what they wanted from the centre.

Within a few months, the centre felt different. More young people came, and they stayed longer. The team felt renewed. Rosalie says that the most important thing was not any single change, but remembering the beginning. "We had not stopped caring," she says. "We had just buried our purpose under paperwork. When we dug it out, everything else started to make sense again." This is precisely the kind of internal renewal Machiavelli described: an institution brought back to its beginnings through the wisdom of its own members, before decay went too far.

Wen and the Good Old Days

Wen is sixty-one and has worked for thirty-five years in the accounts department of a company that makes household appliances. She is respected for her experience, but she has become known for one phrase: "In the old days, we did it properly." She says it whenever a new system or method is introduced. Younger colleagues have started to sigh quietly when she speaks.

Wen genuinely believes that some things were better in the past. Staff had more time to check their work. People knew each other better. Customers spoke to a real person. Some of what she says is true. But she has noticed that her colleagues no longer listen to her, even when her concerns are valid. And she has begun to feel bitter and isolated, counting the years until she retires.

Wen's daughter, who had read about Machiavelli's warning against praising the past, gently pointed out the pattern. "Maybe some things were better," she said. "But when you say everything was better, people stop hearing the things that really were. What exactly was good about the old days, and could you bring that into the new ones?"

Wen thought about this seriously. She realized that what she valued most about the old days was not the old systems themselves, but certain principles: careful checking, real relationships with colleagues and a personal touch with customers. These principles could be applied in the present, with present tools. She began to suggest specific improvements to the new systems based on those principles, such as a simple second check for large payments. She started a monthly lunch for the department, to help people get to know each other. She offered to mentor two younger colleagues in careful accounting practice.

Her colleagues' attitude changed. They began to see Wen not as someone stuck in the past, but as someone who carried valuable experience. Her suggestions were adopted. Her lunches became popular. "I was trying to bring back the old days," Wen says. "That was impossible, and it made me bitter. Now I am trying to bring back the good things from the old days into the new ones. That is possible, and it makes me useful." Wen's story shows the difference Machiavelli drew between empty nostalgia and genuine return to beginnings: one looks only backward, the other carries the best of the past into the future.

Practical Steps: Returning to Your Beginnings

The first step is to remember your first reasons. Think back to when you began your current work, or your working life in general. Why did you choose it? What did you hope to do? What made it meaningful to you? Write these reasons down, as clearly as you can.

The second step is to notice where you have drifted. Compare your first reasons with your working life now. Which parts of your original purpose are still alive? Which have been buried under routine, pressure or habit? Be honest but kind with yourself. Drift is natural, as Machiavelli observed. It is not a failure.

The third step is to bring your first reasons into the present. Ask how you could serve your original purpose with the tools, role and knowledge you have now. Agnieszka walked the wards. Ishaan noticed his best moments. Wen brought old principles into new systems. Small changes can reconnect daily work with deeper purpose.

The fourth step is to renew regularly. Machiavelli believed that renewal should happen often, before decay goes too far. Create a regular practice of return: a yearly letter to yourself, a quarterly conversation about purpose with your team, a moment each week to remember why your work matters.

The fifth step is to learn from fresh eyes. New colleagues, students and young people often see the purpose of work more clearly than those who have done it for years. Like Ishaan with his student, let their enthusiasm remind you of your own beginning.

The sixth step is to distinguish principles from methods. When you feel that "things were better before", ask what exactly was better. Usually, it is a principle, such as care, quality or connection, rather than a particular method. Principles can be carried into the present. Methods often cannot, and need not be.

What Machiavelli Can and Cannot Teach

As this book ends, it is honest to say what Machiavelli can and cannot teach an ordinary working person. He can teach us to see work as it really is, to prepare in calm times, to build our own abilities, to understand people from different positions, to recognize traps, to lead with respect, to seek honest advice, to introduce change wisely, to deal with problems early, to match our way to the times, to give sustainably, to disagree well, to build a good name through deeds, to keep our dignity in loss and to renew our purpose.

He cannot teach us to be good. Machiavelli was not primarily concerned with goodness. He was concerned with what worked, for rulers in a violent and dangerous age. Some of what he recommended, such as deception and cruelty, this book has rejected throughout. The quiet prince of this book takes Machiavelli's clear eyes and practical wisdom, and joins them to honesty, fairness and care for others. That combination, I believe, is both more decent and, in ordinary working life, more effective than Machiavelli's own.

Some real problems need more help than any book can give. If you face difficulties at work involving your rights, your pay, your contract, unfair treatment, bullying or harassment, please find out your rights from a trusted official source or seek qualified advice, and seek support. If work stress or worry is affecting your health or your life, please talk to a doctor or another qualified professional. If you ever feel that you might hurt yourself, or you are in danger, contact a helpline or a medical facility right away, and in immediate danger call your local emergency number.

A Short Exercise: A Letter to Your Beginning

This final exercise is inspired by Agnieszka's letter and by Machiavelli's idea of returning to beginnings. It takes about thirty minutes.

Find a quiet time and place. Take a sheet of paper and write a letter to yourself as you were when you began your current work, or your working life. Begin with "Dear..." and your own name. In the letter, tell your younger self what you have learned since then: about work, about people, about yourself. Tell them what has been hard, and what has been good.

Then tell your younger self which of their hopes and reasons you still carry, and which you have let slip. Be honest. Then promise them one thing: one way you will bring their original purpose back into your work in the coming year. Make it specific and achievable.

Finally, write a short note about what you would like your future self to remember, a year from now. Seal the letter in an envelope, write the date one year from today on the outside and put it somewhere safe. When the date comes, open it, read it and write a new one. This yearly letter can become your own regular renewal, the kind of return to beginnings that Machiavelli believed keeps things alive.

Agnieszka's first yearly letter, written one year into her new role, ended with these words: "You wanted to bring order to chaos so that others could care for people at difficult moments. You still do. Do not let the meetings make you forget it. Walk the wards. Remember Mother. Keep going."

Chapter Summary

In the Discourses, Machiavelli wrote that the institutions which last longest are those often brought back to their beginnings, because every good institution begins with some goodness that tends, over time, to be corrupted (Book 3, chapter 1). Renewal can come from external shocks or, better, from internal wisdom and the example of good individuals. He also warned against the automatic praise of the past, which is often a trick of memory and of our own changing perspective (Book 2, preface).

Agnieszka a year into her new role, Ishaan the tired vet, Rosalie and her drifting team and Wen with her good old days all found renewal by remembering their first reasons, noticing where they had drifted and bringing their original purpose into the present. Returning to beginnings is not nostalgia. It is carrying the best of the past into the future.

Throughout this book, we have met many quiet princes: workers in hospitals, warehouses, kitchens, shops, offices, workshops, farms and schools, each governing the small territory of their own working life. None of them became powerful in Machiavelli's sense. All of them became wiser, steadier and more effective, while staying honest and kind. That, perhaps, is the best use of Machiavelli's clear eyes: not to rule others, but to govern ourselves well, among others, in the working lives we actually have.