Doing Doing Doing

Do this, do that, accomplish this, finish that. Productivity is mantra of our age, our society, and it would seem ourselves. Do the laundry, make the grocery list, clean the house, finish your deadline for work--in short, accomplish your to-do list. It's never ending. It seems that as soon as one thing is "accomplished" on that to-do list another item is added; it's never ending. And I start to question: is this just life? Or have we made life something it should not be? Have we created a false sense of constant urgency, a sense that we must "do" and "accomplish" in order to be considered productive, and overall valued? Is our value then only in what we can do? In what we can accomplish? If that's the case it explains a lot about society... What is the most commonly asked question when you meet someone new? "What do you do?" This instantly assigns value to a very specific area: work. What thing does that person "do" that can tell me something about who they are? But, I suppose it makes sense. We spend over 50% of our waking hours at work, our vocation, our job. It would make sense that we ask this question, but it tells so much about who we are, and more importantly who we've become. What happened to the days where someone was not judged so much on what they did as much as on who they were, their character. The unseen qualities of a person, that were made often in secret and away from the eyes of the world. When did we stop valuing who a person was far above what a person could do? It saddens me, about my world certainly, but also about myself. Because I assign people the same value as my society: "What can you do" rather than "who are you?" We are asking the wrong question, I am asking the wrong question. It's more about the question, but I believe the question reveals so much about who we've become, who I've become. And I can't necessarily change much about the world at large and or undo our incessant need to "do" and "accomplish" but I suppose I can see to changing myself... As I always tell my students, "the only person you can control is yourself." And as I said, I cannot necessarily alter the seemingly incessant pattern our world has succumb to: do this, do that, accomplish this, finish that, BUT I can attempt in small, incremental ways to resist the machine. Ralph Waldo Emerson once said it only takes one, tiny mechanism to stop a great machine--referring at the time to the machine of society, but I think he was right... I may not be able to change the fact that I work at a job that consumes most of waking hours, or that my surrounding society assigns value to me based on these hours spent at work, or on the things I then "do" outside of work. But, I CAN choose to not let it define me, to seek myself outside of what I can "do" or "accomplish" in a day. I CAN learn that stillness is valuable, even if my society screams at me to be "doing" at all times, like being on Facebook in my sparest moments. I CAN choose to ask a different question of life--instead of "What do you do?" I can ask: "Who are you" and "Who am I?" hoping that I can genuinely start living in a way that reflects the question I long to answer myself. May we all choose to become who we were meant to be and not simply "do" what we think we should and miss the purpose of it all.