Sometimes I wake with the worming desire to do.
To bike and ski and run and game and travel and watch the latest show and grow my career and fix my house. I want to excel and accomplish, to check off the boxes, experience life to the fullest, to burn through my to-do list, to acquire status, wealth and reputation. The list of things to do is infinite. The limit does not exist but I must do it all. I must find a way past my human limitations for the sake of Doing. I will run faster, work harder, focus better, cut my way through the fog and chase the high of Doing.
Often this pursuit of Doing is merged with a desire to create. I’m a designer by trade and making is a part of who I am. I want to create art, to capture life’s beauty and show the world just how wonderful it is. To give people a reason in their busy lives to pause and even to hope. Maybe if I can capture and understand meaning, I’ll know it for myself. Maybe if others see meaning through my work, I will have meaning myself. So I must create and these creations must be the most poetic, beautiful works this earth has seen. And I must be prolific because that is the only way to reach such heights as a creator. And thus creating also becomes Doing.
A golden sun is rising on a blue bird day. I can occasionally hear drips as ice melts off the roof. The soft swooshing of my wife combing her hair floats gently into my room.
These early morning moments are my favorite part of the day.
Cirrus clouds streak across the sky with the texture of a paintbrush. Quite literal is the comparison, as air grips moisture high in the atmosphere clouds are pulled across the blue like paint on canvas. The morning sun colors them gold and motes of steam from my coffee promises a warmth and comfort I’ve come to rely daily upon. This is a pure moment, a whole moment.
I'm drawn to create and consume. To play my role in the recursive attention economy. While the sun shines on golden clouds, I stare at my phone… Reading today's horrors in the news. While my coffee cools, I meditate on meaningless digital numbers provided by my bank. Setting down the phone, I'm assaulted by the desire to be something in the eyes of my peers. I want to earn my friend's loyalties, my father's approval and my wife's love… Maybe I can, if I do enough.
Some mornings (as in this one) I find myself simultaneously feeling the present and the relentless drive to do. It isn't the perfect synergy you'd hope for. It's incomplete. I can neither satisfying my addiction to stimulation nor do I fully recognize the beauty around me.
I find that Doing yields very little meaning. It's an empty promise. Accomplishment is a hollow pursuit of worth. All the effort in the world does not lead to something real and will never make me whole.
The worming pressure to accomplish is a cruel master. Promising relief at an end that will never come. There is no joy to be found here. I'm not made to be a part of some technological industrial complex. I'm not made to 10x gains, to fight to stay relevant, to compete for the attention of those I love. I don't think any one is.
Very occasionally, I notice that my felt/perceived need to do recedes. That worm nestled in the psyche becomes something else entirely. Maybe even something beautiful. In these moments, maybe Doing is more akin to a parakeet chirping happily on my shoulder… Doing is a joyful partner as I exist in the here and now. It's the companion that let's loose a howl of joy as I feel the wind through my jacket while racing down a snowy mountain. It feels the deep satisfaction of a hard days work, welcomes the stunning vista seen through sweaty eyes on a hike, it's the gravitas felt while watching a particularly strong movie.
This provides some clarity… I am something apart from my actions and my accomplishments. Myself is something far greater than a LinkedIn bio and follower count. I'm more than somebody's blurry memory of me and more than the to-do list I completed last week. I am something apart from Doing and to claim otherwise is to diminish myself.
So I find that Doing can be a joy but it can never provide meaning. And while it promises the world, Doing without Being is vain. So now let me cast off this life dedicated to Doing.
Instead, let me live! Life is found in the moment, and I rest in the reality that peace and family and wholeness is true affluence. True meaning is seeing the flourishing of your friends and neighbors. I can learn and grow and play knowing that those things have no bearing on my Being. My life as a designer is part of a much bigger whole and my value does not come from salaries, reputation or big clients. Let me create a space where my creativity can be free from the pressures of money and influence. I want to live fully but first I must cease to do.
