The Herculean Feat of a "Human Doing" (prose)

a prose piece about shifting our focus away from "doing" to "being"

a person in a full-lotus position meditating on the coast

There is no thing (okay, maybe a few) more exacting than simply being in a world that places our existence’s validity on one verb and one verb mainly: doing… the productivity-centered variety.

do

/do͞o/

verb

1. perform (an action, the precise nature of which is often unspecified)

2. achieve or complete

3. act of behave in a specified way

4. be suitable or acceptable

If we’re not striving to be more than we are by doing more than we can [handle], then who are we, really? And is who we are even worthy and up to these soul-siphoning societal standards? Reminder: we’re worthy as we are!

If we’re not doing what we love and getting paid to do it (if we’re lucky, in some ways unlucky) to buy the ✨shiny things✨ we use as balms to fill our chasms that we think are voids but are actually deep aches that we no longer talk to, let alone listen to—then

Who. Are. We?

If not our job titles, who?

If not our accolades, who?

If not our achievements, who?

If not the stuff we do to pass the time, who?

If not what we do for others, who?

I’m not here to give a direct answer to a gift (existence) that I’m still unraveling… that I’m often convinced is more curse than blessing.

All I know (as far as I know) is that it’s in the “not-doing” that being makes itself known. But in a world of towering bills that need to be paid, “do” can’t be fully shunned lest we become undone. So, we “work” with what we have: time (usually not much of it, I’ll admit)…

🍵to drink a cup of tea and feel the cup’s condensation on cold palms

🌲to look at a pine tree, a sparrow, a mossy log in equal reverence

🧘to sit and observe the breath

🪑to literally just sit… that’s it

a sparrow in a pine tree (credit: Hedera Baltica)

Maybe then, no—certainly then, the core Self will bubble up to the surface and utter a healing hello through a face softened by momentary serenity.Then maybe soon after we become acquainted, we forget, or more precisely, get distracted (pummeled?) by what’s next on our never-ending to-do lists…

But I feel, the “fun” of it all, the point of being here now is in the re-remembering.

“I am a human being, not a human doing.” -Kurt Vonnegut, American Writer & Humorist