I don’t own a bathrobe.  I haven’t owned one since 1978 when my in-laws gave me the long, velour, zip-up-the-front kind at Christmas time.  It served its purpose back then–a quick extra layer to throw on in the wee hours of a chilly morning when my babies needed to be fed, changed, and soothed back to sleep.  But that bathrobe is long gone now. So are the babies.

I actually hate the way bathrobes feel on my body.  They feel almost as if they are weighing me down with the expectation that I will do nothing constructive while I am in their clutches.  If I wear them long enough, they make me feel oddly depressed, although I can’t put into words exactly why.  Maybe it’s because they represent sitting around, inactivity, and an unwillingness to get the day started. Maybe it’s because they make me feel sweaty, even though no work has been done.  Maybe it’s because the idea of a bathrobe forces me to acknowledge the distinction between being and doing.

Being and doing.

We live in a world where productivity is valued more than mindfulness.  It is a world where a  person’s worth is measured by the material wealth he has amassed over a lifetime rather than the wisdom he has gathered by thinking and dreaming as the years unfold.  This is probably why some people believe that being and doing are at odds with one another and that to achieve true wisdom, one must favor the former over the latter.  Can’t these two ways of experiencing life be part of everything we do?

Being and doing are not mutually exclusive.  They are intertwined like the vines and tendrils of morning glories—very difficult to separate and all part of one plant. If a person spends his days in a frenzy of productivity and does not stop to be mindful, his life lacks balance.  Some of the plant will wither and die, making for an unhappy and unfulfilled life.  Mahatma Ghandi once said, “There is more to life than increasing its speed.”  In other words, you can be a doer, but you must find balance.

I am a doer, a list-maker, a morning person.  My alarm is set for 6:00 a.m. most mornings, but I rarely get the chance to hear how it sounds.   I am awake, dressed, and busy before it has a chance to ring.  That’s the way I like to start my day.  I make a daily list of “things to do” over coffee, writing down all the details of what I wish to accomplish for the day. I take great pleasure in crossing those things off my list once they’re done.  This behavior is so ingrained that if I happen to do something that isn’t on my list, I hastily jot it down after the fact, just so I can cross it off.

Even though I pride myself on getting things done, I have learned to allow time for thinking, daydreaming, and noticing my surroundings.  The garden is a perfect place for this.  It is a place that demands work, but offers peace and serenity.  The pleasure I find there comes not only from getting my hands dirty, but from noticing the all the little miracles within reach.

I was once given a writing assignment about the difference between being and doing and bristled at the way the initial question was posed: “Is your goal in life to be productive, or would you rather be happy?”  The question made the assumption that being productive and being happy are mutually exclusive and cannot be achieved at the same time. My experience told a different story– that doing and being are not mutually exclusive at all and often happen simultaneously.

When I am busy with a task I have done many times—something like weeding the garden, folding wash, or peeling potatoes– I tend to go on “autopilot.”  These autopilot moments clear my mind, inevitably leading it to a place of peace and contentment.  The being and the doing meld together during these times.  My heart feels a sense of gratitude for being alive and for being able to accomplish the task at hand.  By noticing these thoughts and feelings, mindfulness becomes a prayer of thanksgiving.

When famed writer Oliver Sacks learned he had terminal cancer, he wrote, “It is up to me now to choose how to live out the months that remain to me. I have to live in the richest, deepest, most productive way I can.”  Why should we wait for such a time to come upon us?

Whether we are doers or dreamers, whether we own bathrobes, or not, it has always been in our power to choose to live richly and deeply–cultivating mindfulness, creating balance, and upon examining our lives, choosing to live in a genuine way.