Doing vs. Being

According to Hofstede’s cultural dimension theory individuals in the United States are the most individualistic in the entire world.  You might say that we are driven.   For me at least that translates into a need to always, and I mean always, be doing something.  If I’m not doing something then I feel like I am wasting time.

We are goal oriented.  Most of us have a series of goals that we want to achieve and when one goal is accomplished we move on to the next one.  I remember when I graduated from Washington State University with a  Ph.D.  That had been my only goal for four years.  Did it.  Accomplished it.  Cross that puppy of the list.  But wait, what do I do now?  I had no other goals in the pipeline and I felt lost.  Quick!  Find another goal.  Tenure at a big research university sounded like a good goal.  Planned that out, did it, and had to look for a new goal.   I wasn’t on a search for meaning in my life, I was just on a search for the next goal.

Having spent years as a computer programmer, systems manager and IT consultant (yup, that was a previous life) I like to plan and organize.  You know the type, completely linear . . . have a plan, work the plan.  That was me.  The number one question was “How?”  I had a goal, now I needed a plan, a how, to get me there.  Never stopped to ask why . . . “Why and I doing this?” and I never, ever asked “What do I really want?”  It was just, I have a goal, how am I going to get there?

I realize now that I slowly morphed from being a human being into a “human doing”.  Sometimes just being is the best thing to be.  I have replace my “How?” question with a new one, “What?”  “What do I want to do?” not, “How am I going to do it.”  I don’t worry about how it is going to happen and rather than constantly trying to swim against the current of my life I let my inner self (higher being, subconscious mind, or whatever you want to call it) take over and work out the details.  When left alone my inner self does a miraculously marvelous job of defining the “what” and then figuring out the “how” and I have transformed back from being a “human doing” into a “human being”.

Life is much better now that I work to live, rather than live to work.

To your health . . .