Читать книгу Moments in Between - David Kundtz - Страница 23

Doing and Being

A middle-aged married couple find themselves trying to deal with a less than perfect marriage. In their discussion the wife asks her husband, a physician, why he spends so much time at work. “What is it you get at work that you don't get at home?”

Her husband answers, “When I'm at work it's the only time I feel like I know who I really am.”

Being a doctor has become who he is, not just what he does. When he is at home there is no need for a doctor, but much need for a husband, father, homemaker, family man, caregiver, short-order cook, Mr. Fix-it, neighbor, playmate, friend, and so on. But he is a doctor and thus cannot respond with any enthusiasm or authenticity to all his other roles.

If he could learn to see that doctoring is something he does, that it is his work, as well as possibly a source of much of joy and fulfillment, then he could be free to do lots of other things as well, and just be himself. As it is, when he returns home he is still a doctor. Most of the time nobody there needs a doctor. So he floats around unengaged, bored, and causing trouble.

Doing nothing can help you if you find yourself in the doctor's situation. Be still and be with yourself. By doing nothing the doing part of you drops away and the being part of you gradually comes alive. It has to, because the doing is gone.

The irony is that the more you separate what you are from what you do, the more you can do!

If you are what you do, when you don't you aren't.

—Quoted by

William Byron, S.J.

Consider: If you were no longer to do what you do, who would you be?