Do No Thing. Be.
Today, I read an entry in Mark Nepo’s Book The Book of Awakening. The passage started with a quote that said,
Yours is to live it, not Reveal It. — Helen Luke
The passage goes on to remind me that striving to write or contribute to the world or to “Be Somebody” isn’t what I’m here for. He says, “I discovered that living is the original art form.”
Huh…
The thing is, I’ve been struggling. Do I write? Do I coach? What kind of coaching? What’s my niche? Who are my clients? And I’ve been inundated with all kinds of things telling me how to maximize my business and my impact. How to write a novel by Spring. How to finish my Memoir over Christmas. ETC.
All the while I spend my moments wondering “What the hell am I supposed to do?”
The other day, I spent an entire 24 hours doing No Thing but staring out into the woods in my back yard. I saw two cats (not mine) and tons of birds. I used binoculars to watch my cat Bruce Wayne (aka. Batman) stare at nothing on the ground and paw his foot over it. He scratched at the nothing and seemed to think it was something. He even pounced on it a few times. This cat is odd, he sometimes just stares at the wall…
I used binoculars to watch my other cat scale the fence and walk around the woods chasing bugs and who knows what else. I listened to the music of the guy who lives on the other side of the woods while he worked on his new deck. “Drive” by Incubus played. Most other songs I couldn’t make out. I watched the trees that still had leaves wave hello to me. I watched the wind blow through the branches and leaves swirl in the wind. Sometimes I thought the leaves were birds, and I picked up the binoculars to see more closely. I saw a few squirrels going from tree to tree.
I waited for some insight that would tell me what I am supposed to do. Nothing showed up. No media, no cleaning, no reading, no writing for 24 hours. Lots of meditation, observation of nature, sitting in a chair, and soaking in the sun. Other than that, nothing. I gained no insight from this activity. No major aha moment showed up for me.
So now what?
I’m going to just live. I’ll write, work, do some things and stuff, but for now I not strive for it to be anything other than a place where I collect things I write and things I like that other people have written. Maybe it becomes something, maybe it doesn’t.
I’ll love that my daughter who is virtual right now used the word “palette” when talking about the colors she is using in her water painting that she sneaks in all day long between online lessons. I’ll listen to my son yowl, “I’m gonna shoot for the moon!” when playing the new the Roblox rocket game he recently discovered. I’ll enjoy that my oldest son seems to be finding his way after struggling with me and his dad’s divorce 4 years ago. I’ll marvel at the joy my husband finds in parenting and cars. I’ll write some things, paint some things, walk the dog, work, and live.
Shrug.
