be

I bought this cheap yoga mat from target for $5 or so, purely so I could do yoga outside more often without worrying about getting my nice (and way more expensive) yoga mat all dusty or scratched up on the patio concrete.

this cheap yoga mat gets used way more than the other one.

 

it was only $5 so I didn't fuss too much about the cheesy sentiment spelled out at the top. "do what you need to be OKAY" it says. the okay is in white, and the rest a dark blue. usually this kind of adornment is very meh to me and I avoid it whenever possible.

it is a nice yoga-ish sentiment though. very much in line with Ms. Adriene Mischler's "Find What Feels Good" mantra. 

the other day, with my knees blocking out most of the all-caps "OKAY," I got thinking, as I do, about doing and being and all the stories, from barest anecdote to most intricate parable, that alternately draw bold lines of dichotomy between them or twisty lines of intertwining for me. 

 

1. being is opposed to doing. being is calm and simple and passive and inevitable. doing is rambunctious, busy, and difficult. 

I've been reading Jenny Odell's How to Do Nothing recently and its premise fits with this distinction. we don't always need to be doing things. it is perfectly fine and natural and healthy to just be. just sit in a public garden and stare into space. walk along the beach and forget about your to-do lists.

 

or... 2. being is as doing does. you can't be something or someone without some actions that align your being-self with whatever or whomever you want to be. you can't be a professional football player if all you do is wear a certain color of jersey. there's more to it than that. and you can't be a pink flamingo if you don't eat the exact right kind of shrimp to turn your feathers pink. 

 

(the flamingo example was one of the drawn-out parable kinds of stories. pink flamingos are to their shrimp diets as true Christians are to the words of Jesus, or something like that.)

of course all the nuance and mushiness of our beautiful human language means that it can be both. being can be separate from doing. and doing can be absolutely everything that supports our being.

so the phrase "do what you need to be" has been rattling gently around in my head for weeks now. often the thought is shadowed by a somewhat-related question as to the meaning of need vs. want.

needing and being and doing. how would we draw out a diagram of how these versatile verbs truly relate to each other?

it seems impossible to be without needing. and so much of our doing is to fill our various needs. I suppose, too, that how (or whether) we meet which needs shapes whoever we are. circular.

do what you need to be. 

so many ways to parse and ponder on that phrase...

are the 'do' and the 'be' two sides of a math formula, one in which the what you do-- the variable--must equate just so with your whole being, irrevocably? 

or is the fulcrum of the sentence further over to the right, after the emphasis on need, as if to give us permission: do whatever it is you need to do in order to give yourself space to simply be?

I like that interpretation, I think. but I still don't quite know if I understand it. does it prioritize doing too much? does it make the rambunctious, busy, difficult staircases of doing a prerequisite to calm and simple being?

the cool thing is that I can keep thinking about it. meditating on it. being, doing, and both.