Reflections of an Anxious Bus Rider

There’s doing.  And there’s being.  And there is being while doing.  I have spent a lot of my life on that first one.  Doing.  And frankly, it has been at the core of a lot of my angst.  I suspect it is at the core of most of our angst.  Doing, rather than being is how we define ourselves.  When you first meet someone, what do they ask?  Usually it is, “What do you do?” as in, what do you do for a living?  We form our identities around our professions.  You might respond, “I am an educator/plumber/doctor/writer/ highwire tightrope walker.”  In some ways, maybe we allow our professions to be a proxy for our character.  As in, “through my choice of career, you can see that I like to help people learn/like to fix things/want to help people heal/am artistic/do wild and scary things in a circus-type setting.”  When we tell people what we do, it is sort of a social shortcut to give them insight into who we are.  Right?

But is it really?  Or maybe we have misconstrued who we are with what we do.  That whole doing versus being thing.

But then, because our professions aren’t enough, we busily add to our list of tasks, perhaps somehow convinced that if we just stay busy we can both get a whole lot of stuff done and demonstrate to others that we are productive and important members of society.

We exhort busyness.  When we meet up with an old friend or acquaintance and ask how they have been, we often hear that they have been “busy.”  Sometimes “Really busy” or “Crazy busy.”  (Me? That last one? Guilty.) Everyone nods in recognition and admiration.  Because busy equals productive and productive equals accomplished and probably even important.  And important equals valuable.  Because we do stuff.  And it’s important.  It’s important stuff.

Here again, the We that I speak of is Me.  I hate admitting that while I am motivated by my desire to do good in the world, aren’t I also motivated, at least a little, to be accomplished?  To be successful?  And to have others admire that success?  

The more I think about it, the more I think we are addicted to two things: One is stuff.  The other is accomplishment.  This addiction to get more stuff and to be accomplished in others’ eyes, is what drives us to overemphasize the need to do and de-emphasize the need to simply be.  Because our identity is caught up in what we do rather who we are, we must constantly be doing something.

It leaves very little room for reflection or meditation or mindfulness.  It COULD give us room for meditation. That whole, “being while doing” thing.  But do we let it?  Or more often, are we so busy thinking about the next thing that we don’t do anything mindfully?  Instead, we do most things mindlessly.  We move from one task to the next, with this ever increasing list of “What Else We Have To Do” running through our head.  In some ways we are victims of self inflicted violence, attacks that leave us constantly vigilant and ready to do battle with the Next Thing.  

In the last week I have started to take the bus again.  Taking the bus to work is horribly inefficient.  It takes a hour to get to the office.  Zipping over in my car takes about twenty minutes.  But I like to take the bus BECAUSE it is inefficient.  With small kids at home (and most people can come up with other completely valid reasons as well, for why this is true in their lives), there is little time for inefficiency.  We rush from this thing to the next and tell ourselves and the guy behind the cash register and our colleagues that we simply can’t let things take any more time than they already do.  We don’t have the time. In fact, we need to halve that time that that thing is already taking, somehow, because we are busy.  Really, really busy.  Crazy busy.

But every morning, I insist on taking the bus anyway.

And I stare blankly out of the window.

For the first few days, I would read, or write, or listen to a podcast, hyper vigilant of not wasting a single moment of time.  Not! One! Moment!  Every second must be put to the highest and best use!  It would be best if I could knit while listening to an NPR podcast while simultaneously dictating a treatise on spreading world peace during my daily commute.  This makes sense, because during my bus commute, I am not really doing anything, because I am just sitting there.  Just sitting there, riding the bus, not doing anything of use, and by god, those are wasted windows of time.  Wasted!

But then one day last week, after I wrote the last post, I forced myself to leave my book in my bag, my iPod off and my hands on my lap.  I watched the cars go by and people get on and off the bus.  My to-do list grew in my head and I reached, more than once, for my journal to start writing down the gnawing tasks.

But I stopped, each time.

Instead I reminded myself that the to-do list could wait.  It could wait until I got into the office, until the bus ride was over.  My mind, satisfied with that response, calmed.  And I stared back out the window.  I noticed the hard plastic of the bus seat and the wind coming through the open window and my breath.  Then I remembered that thing!  That Thing I had to do that was totally important that I forgot to do before and I really needed to do it right now!  I couldn’t just sit here!  I had to Do Something Now!  My body tensed up and I reached for a pad of paper and a pencil to get started on That Thing.  And I paused.  And then I reminded myself that I could start That Thing once at the office.  The to-do list could wait.  And I stared back out of the window again. My jaw relaxed a little.

This went on over and over again.  Me, reaching for and then releasing my notebook, settling back into a period of just being, promising that I could move into “doing” mode once at my desk.  I felt anxious.  I felt uncomfortable.  I felt guilty.  And I watched all of those feelings come up and let them come and go without holding onto any of them.  And I still did not open my notebook.

A week later, I feel calmer.  I continue insisting on taking the bus, insisting on inserting some inefficiency in my life.  In a society that demands and expects efficiency, I have decided to invite and embrace a bit of inefficiency into my life, because this is where we have the space to pause.  To reflect.  To be.  Maybe someday I can expand my space to be outside of the bus, but for now, it is a rare opportunity to simply sit and be, and I relish it.

We all need to balance doing with being.  We all need that bus ride.  We all need space to simply sit and be.  There will always be that One More Thing that we have to do. But today, right now, I hope you’ll take a few minutes to pause and just be.  In the end, that is all life really is, is a series of moments strung together, and if we are always doing, we aren’t ever being, and life will pass us by rather quickly while we are busy doing other stuff.

So join me in letting a little inefficiency into your life.  Climb on that bus, stand in that long line, bake your own bread, mow your lawn with a push mower, whatever. Set that to-do list down and stare at a wall for a few minutes.  You won't regret it.