When are you being today?

When I first left the classroom and went to live in Tanzania, I spent a lot of time watching ants. It wasn't an intentional 'thing I planned to do', more something I found myself quietly doing every morning as I sat on the porch drinking tea and slowing myself down from a decade or more of freneticism.

A wise friend once reminded me: "We're human beings Rachel, not human doings..."

And yet we've carved our lives and stories around 'doing' being as most prominent and celebrated part.

Don't get me wrong, doing is essential... but so is 'being'.

Where in your day are you simply 'being'? Having that time to just be - with your thoughts, with your body, with your deeper, quieter self; with nature, with silence? Having that space to just inhabit the wholeness of yourself with a lightness that allows the sediments inside you to settle? Having those moments to pay attention to the world as it whizzes on by...?

One of the biggest stories to shift in our dominant culture is the story of 'enoughness' and this ever-increasing pressure to do more. I've recognised how trapped I was in that story for the first part of my life, until I started watching ants 🐜 slowing down and allowing myself to inhabit myself fully for - quite probably - the first time in my life.

Now each day is a delicate balance of being and doing, allowing nourishment from each to energise the other.

🌱 When and where are you 'doing' today?
🌱 When and where are you 'being' today?

#slowdown #radicalslowness #being #presence #changethenarrative