Are you a human doing or a human being?
OK - it’s an old one … but a good one. Right now, check in with yourself … are you a human doing or a human being?
The thing that I’ve found this week is that it’s not an either/or. But being has to come first. When I prioritise being, everything else is simple and easy.
Being is the most important part of you, because it’s your core, your centre. It gives substance to everything you do.
Without a sense of being, all words, all actions are empty. You get more and more off-centre, more and more rushed. Your heart rate and blood pressure go up and stay up, and there’s no fun.
When I nurture and prioritise my being, when I act and speak and listen and love from there, everything is so much better, smoother.
Everything is manageable. There IS enough time. I can step back and not get lost in the hectic pace of life and the responsibilities, the to-do list, the things that go wrong and unexpected, all that stuff, because I remember how I want to live life is far more important than the what.
I can, and naturally do, appreciate what I have, here, now, rather than solely being fixated on some future moment, some future goal, and missing the simple goodness of what is around me.
We chase false targets. “This will make me happy and fulfilled …” “Getting this done is the most important thing to me …”
Narp.
These things may be right up there, but your being is the only arena that will make you happy and fufilled. Your being is the source of the MOST important thing to you.
I’ve seen there’s two parts to forgetting being:
It’s easy to make a trade. It’s easy to believe: I’ll do all this stuff, I’ll just get it done, it doesn’t matter how much stress I’ll cause myself, because afterwards I shall be able to prioritise my being …
Yet tomorrow never comes, does it? The end of your to-do list never comes. Being has to go first, otherwise you never get to it. And it makes everything better, more rich, more true. You have to prioritise being if you’re interested in doing your best at anything.
Quality or quantity?
Is it the quality of your attention in each moment? Or the quantity of things you can pack into each and every moment?
Quality, every time.
The second thing is that no one will give you the time to just be. Doing will eat up all of your day, if you let it. You have to make the day happen for you. You have to make time for not-doing.
There are a whole host of activities: eating, being with your family, reading, loving, walking, creativity - even exercising and learning - these, and a whole bunch more, are all acts that are best done without a rigid doing goal. They’re definitely a completely different experience without haste.
Without prioritising your being, these things get filled with rushing and pushing, and that’s not fun or effective.
Stay with your being - that’s the key to a life well lived, for you and everyone around you. Don’t give up doing - that’s important (and fun too with the right attitude, the right sense of being!) but make being first and last.
If a life of service to the greater good is at all important to you?
As the great Maya Angelou once said:
“People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.”