Don't Just Do Something
My ghostwriting projects have always been immensely challenging from making deadlines shorter than a mini-skirt to a slew of people to please – the agent, the publisher, the publishing editor, the manager and the celebrity. The task is to gather a ton of material, organize it all chronologically, conduct taped interview with my subject, listen back to the tapes, transcribe them as quickly as possible and turn them into a good read, something engaging and entertaining.
I had just completed one of these jobs with a particularly punishing deadline when the phone rang. It was my mother. “How are you?” she asked.
“Exhausted,” I told her. “I’ve been writing like a speed demon and now that we submitted the book, I feel strange, like I can't catch my breath. All I can do is sit here. I have to remind myself how to do nothing for a while and just rest.”
We spoke for a few more minutes, we probably discussed bestselling books, one of a very few topics that we had in common, and a few days later, I got a letter in the mail. I recognized my mother’s exquisite handwriting and I opened the letter. She shared a few pleasantries but she got to the gist of the letter quickly. “I try to do a few unpleasant tasks a day,” she wrote, “ to keep up my discipline.” I wondered if her writing that letter fell under her category of unpleasant tasks.
My parents were perpetually “doing.” My mother appeared to be tired a lot, and the only time I saw her relax was when she was reading a book after dinner. Never in the daytime when there were other things to attend to. When she and my father took a day off or went on vacation, they called themselves “lazy bums.” Slowing down and being still was not in their wheel house and they passed those attitudes down to my sister and me.
When I was in the ballet, productivity was never an issue since we rehearsed all day long, went on tour and performed every night. But when I left the ballet at 19 years old, I was lost. There was nothing I had to do. I felt anxious a lot until I had a turning point in 1971 when I picked up a book by Baba Ram Dass called “Be Here Now.” It became the bible for the counterculture of which I was a member and for the first time, I contemplated the concept of not rushing around and being still. I read through the pages hungrily and I became aware of my breath. The message was that instead of ruminating over the past or worrying about the future, try being present in the moment. I read about Buddhist monks who sit in a cave and meditate all day long and meditate. They do this for hours on end, practicing being present as they radiate love and compassion to all sentient beings. And for them, that’s enough.
We live in a society that measures our self-worth and our validity by how much we can get done in a day. We are slaves to our “to-do lists and we become breathless as we race around in our cars, cursing the traffic and the red lights that seem to be holding us back. We fret about being late and we become enraged at the car in front of us when it doesn’t rush through the yellow light and get one car ahead of where we are as if it made a difference.
Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh suggested that when we get to a red light, we could try to quiet our minds and breathe. We could see it as an opportunity. I’ve tried it, it isn't easy, but I feel a lot less anxious when I start driving again.
As I move forward in life, I do my best to experience each moment as it’s happening. I don't want to miss the beauty by rushing around and “being productive. What does that even mean? We fill our calendars with appointments and make ourselves crazy as we rush from place to place. The irony is that when we don’t take a moment to get quiet and breathe, we're exhausted at the end of the day but we’re too anxious to sleep.
I remember a quote from an Indian guru. “Don’t just do something. Sit there.” It sounds good but replacing the idea of being productive with being at peace takes some doing. Replacing the idea of judging people and ourselves to acceptance and compassion also takes some doing.
I wrote a book for a spiritual leader from India, Prem Rawat, called, “Peace Is Possible.” I think it's a profound title because it refers, not to the absolute achievement of the goal but rather to a process as we keep the goal of peace in mind and stop moving long enough to feel it inside ourselves. Stopping to meditate in its many forms can lead us back to ourselves. sitting, chanting, walking slowly, breathing consciously, and for me, writing, are there for us to make peace a possible goal.