Have you ever felt that in order to feel like you have a meaningful life you need to be busy?
Having a full life is nice. As long as we fill it mostly with activities we truly love. When things slow down, some people have a tendency to fill those segments of empty time. In order to feel it's a purposeful and meaningful life, we start to fill up our time willy nilly. However, it's not really more meaningful, just busier.
We're the producer, director, and actor in our daily lives. As a producer, we create our life goals. Taking on the director's job, we think about how we want to achieve those goals. Assuming the role we're playing as an actor, we take action towards our goals. Often one of the goals is to look good while achieving our goals. Not so much as we really are, but as we want to be seen and experienced by others. Are we seeking approval from others? Is our life more meaningful based on how others see us?
Another way to bring a false sense of meaning is to place importance on efficiency, productivity, and speed. Getting things done faster. Looking for fast and easy. Buying products that offer quick results. Calling our loved ones but thinking about what we're going to be doing when we're off the call. "Just want to say a quick hi! Don't want to take up too much of your time!" Is it a responsibility or a sincere desire?
There's nothing wrong with speed when it's really prudent. For example, fast can be good when we're running from an alligator. Best to remember to run zig-zag.
Outside of protecting ourselves from a dangerous threat, what's our hurry? Are we running to something or away from it? Either way, in hurrying we can miss the beautifully inconvenient and messy parts of life. It's the seemingly messy parts that best illustrates humanity. I'd rather hear about someone's real-life imperfect experiences rather than how incredibly clever, fast, and efficient they are.
Here's my best example of how speed can be a buzz-kill.
A few years ago I went on a couple of hikes with the local ski club. My two favorite things in the world, hiking, and skiing. One of which I no longer do, but at that time I still hiked. What could be better than people who loved to ski and hike? This group would be perfect for me. I couldn't have been more wrong.
I've never seen such intensely driven hikes. 
People were practically running. And it was a steep uphill! We blew by the beautiful ferns, the majestic trees, the spring flowers that had popped up, the occasional bird call that might make one want to pause and look. The freaking view! Missed!
The last thing I wanted, after a week of stressful work, was to turn one of my favorite activities into a speedy endeavor where I would blow by the good parts. Fast on the treadmill at the gym is one thing but not in nature.
Even if you don't gravitate to a slower vibe, slowing things down for a minute is worth a try.
- Discover what being feels like to you. Try it for just an hour a day. Eventually, nicer feelings will replace the initial panic or squirmy feelings.
- Instead of creating a punch-list for the next day, wait until the next morning to decide what you want to do.
- Try not to fill those empty moments. Let the empty moments just sit and notice what shows up.
What might show up? Ideas, inspiration, dreams, a sense of peace, calmer energy and thoughts, gratefulness and appreciation. Enjoying a moment more. Hearing your intuition.
The dance on our way to experience being.
What does being look like to you? Laying on a couch? Reading a book? Creating art? Cooking? Doing a hobby? Wait a minute, it's beginning to feel ambitious again, isn't it? Could being be something you structure a goal and to-do list around? "Ok! Well, tomorrow in my spare time, I'm going to clean out all my closets. Then I'm going to ________". That feels like doing rather than being, doesn't it?
When I first tuned into the concept of being it was at my intuitive guidance's recommendation. Here's how I worked through it.
The goal of being is not to have a goal. Wait, that's a goal. Forget the goal and just be. OK, got it. Trying again to do this being thing. Ugh. It's not about trying or doing. It's just about being. What exactly is being again?!
And so it went round and round until my head hurt. I was tired of figuring out what being is. I just wanted to do it. Oops.
Even the dictionary didn't help much. Existence? Duh. Being - The dictionary's definition
I understood the part about not having it be a goal. It still became a goal. I had to work hard not to try to be perfect at being. Therein lies the challenge. Working hard at not working hard. And yet, I caught myself doing just that, time and again. At some point, I started to ease into the art of being. So much so that I didn't even try to figure out what I wanted to do next in terms of my work.
You see, back then I'd very happily left my 30+ year career and was blissfully unemployed.
I left my career so that I could have the time to investigate more fulfilling work.
For a while, I put aside that goal of figuring out what my new work was going to look like. I discovered Zumba. I had always wanted to practice yoga at home every morning instead of driving to a studio. So I did. Rather than only painting in a painting class, I started painting at home. And I enjoyed oodles of walks through the woods in a neighboring nature center. No longer as drawn to my to-do lists and errands there was a fair amount of sitting around. I sat facing the wooded lake I lived on and watched the squirrels run around the trees. Where did the time go? I hadn't noticed.
For me, being is allowing me to go with the flow. Yeah, that's too unclear and slightly full of BS. Said another way, it's being more aware of how I feel and honoring that. Honoring how I feel before I rush to do something that's more automatic than truly desirable. There are times I feel like I'm shot out of a rocket and concentrate on my work. Other times I'm asked to slow things down and take notice.
Do I feel drawn to anything in particular? A walk? Snooze a bit longer? Work on my computer? Finishing a project? Staring out the window at the birds on the bird feeder? Weeding the clover out of our pretty groundcover plants? Meditating? Yoga?
To do whatever I'm drawn to doing, without forcing productivity on myself for the sake of, "I matter because I'm busy". Therefore, I make myself busy to matter.
I matter no more or no less if I just want to lay around.
I'm no less worthy if I choose to do what many might call, goofing off. Of course, I'm not suggesting we can't ever be busy or productive again. I'm just saying in more and more moments, it feels lovelier to pay attention to what really matters. And, what will matter to you is as individual and unique as you are.
After many months, I was finally ready to bring back a bit of doing to my life again.
There was space for a balance of be and do. And I started to consider what I wanted my work to feel like and to look like. The reality was that I left my old career so that I could do something more meaningful. I couldn't do that by watching squirrels. There had to be some amount of doing again.
The less busy my life is, the more the ideas flow and the more connected I feel. I feel a deeper connection to my husband, my work, even to nature. There's less seriousness and more fun. This is how I'm meant to live my life.
So, my beautiful intuitive guidance, "Is this what you meant when you said I'd be moving into "be" and "do"?
I still have dreams and goals. But whatever I do or don't accomplish I now see as less important. It's more about giving myself the space to enjoy life, no matter what I'm doing.
Whatever's around the next corner in this lifetime of ours is in part a result of how we're being.