Being in the Culture of Doing

“I am a human being, not a human doing.” — Kurt Vonnegut

There are times when we just have to get things done and we don’t have much time for ourselves. We exist in a society that places a lot of value on productivity and busy-ness. Sometimes it actually seems that we are valued according to how much we have to do and how busy we are. We really seem to like being busy.

Or perhaps we don’t really like it, at least not all the time. Perhaps we have just been trained to avoid “idle hands” and we think we need to remain busy or we might end up in some kind of trouble. Idle hands are the devil’s playthings, after all, right? Or so many of us have been taught.

There may be some truth to this idea that if we don’t have enough to do we are vulnerable to filling our idle time with unhealthy activities. My belief, however, is that we do this because we have been kept busy for so long that we haven’t trained ourselves how to just be still and fill that stillness with something meaningful and healthy.

The art of quiet contemplation, which used to be a huge part of daily life before industrialization and technology, has become largely lost in modern society. This loss has changed us. Science shows us that quiet contemplation activities such as mindfulness and meditation actually help develop the brain in healthy ways. This brain development then shapes human behavior in healthy ways. One could easily argue, then, that with the cultural loss of quiet contemplation in our daily lives, we have shaped our brains, and our behaviors, in less healthy directions. It seems to me that there is plenty of data to support this.

As a working professional, I treated many kids and adolescents who were getting into a lot of trouble simply because they didn’t know how to deal with boredom, downtime, loneliness/aloneness. They couldn’t sit with themselves, they didn’t know how to “just be”. They searched for connection and activity in unhealthy ways because they didn’t know what else to do. I saw this as a direct result to spending their childhoods in over scheduled and overly structured settings that prevented them from learning how to “just be.”

“Just being” is something we come into the world knowing how to do. If we allow it, infants actually fill their time just observing, just experiencing. Just “being.” Yes, they need a lot of human interaction for brain development as well, but some time spent just being is also positive. The problem is that our society doesn’t allow that to go on too long. As parents we feel a lot of pressure to keep our kids entertained, to keep them in activities that will give them some edge later on in life, to structure time for them and to indoctrinate them into our culture of busy-ness. I believe a lot gets lost in this.

Recently I’ve found myself struggling with too much busy. I spent most of the summer and early fall in an almost constant state of doing—traveling to see family and friends, transitioning my kids back to school and doing the myriad of volunteer opportunities that come up. I am so grateful that I have the opportunity to do these things, and yet, they occur at such rapid fire pace that I find myself "doing" more than “being”. Then I find myself coping more than experiencing, because all of that “doing” is actually stressful and depleting. I'm sure I’ve been able to find moments of presence with my kids, and I’ve enjoyed so much of this time. I am aware, however, that I often have not been able to be fully present with so much "doing”.

As much as I'd like to problem solve about how to do it better next time, I think the truth is that we will always have these times of "doing" simply because this is how our society is currently wired. Perhaps the work here is to accept this as part of our culture and to find a way to work within it until we can slow it down a bit, which will also be temporary.

How do we find ways to “just be” within our culture of “doing", however? It is an important question. All of the frenetic doing takes us away from our roots, we stop cultivating them, we lose at least parts of our foundation, and our attempts to rise up become more difficult and less successful. Most of of the cultivation of our roots requires some level of stillness, focused attention, presence, and awareness. These qualities are very hard to capture during times of constant doing.

Because our society is not one that supports “being”, we must find ways to be present within the “doing.” This requires flexibility in our thinking. For me this is actually really difficult. I have my set way of defining my practices. I want to do them a certain way, for a certain period of time, at a certain time of day. For me, adjusting my expectations and “settling for less” than I expect is really hard. I end up going through my day of “doing” feeling like I’m not doing enough, preoccupied by what I’m not doing, and feeling somewhat stressed and resentful that I can’t get my “being” done. Ironic, but in our culture of doing, it makes sense that I would feel this way.

The trick is to find ways to be flexible about how to be present. We may not be able to stop doing, we may not be able to sit and just be. We can, however, focus our attention on whatever it is we are doing and practice being more present in it. We can allow ourselves a moment or two to focus on our breath no matter what we are doing. We can multitask and actually practice mindfulness while we go about our day. We can focus on the feel of the water and the smells of shampoo and soap in the shower, and on the smell and taste and texture of food we are preparing and eating. We can focus on our body sensations, thoughts, feelings while our kids are running around crazy, fighting with each other, playing sweetly together, cuddling with us.

The truth is that there are an infinite number of ways to do our practices informally throughout the day, and to find moments of stillness and quiet contemplation amidst the chaos. Some of us just need to let go of our expectations, feel grateful we have this, and trust that it carries great benefit in our busy, daily lives.

Ultimately, if we are able to train ourselves to be more present in our busy, daily lives, aren’t we accomplishing exactly what we are setting out to do?

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