Guest post by J. M. Hawkins
Dear Soul,
To be honest, if I weren’t locked into a job and didn’t have a lot of responsibilities, I don’t think I would have a good reason to get out of bed in the morning.
Dear Life,
That’s the reason we’re talking. Arise to be surprised!
And here’s the first surprise: It sounds like you’re so caught up in your own to-do list that you’ve forgotten how to “just be.” The problem is, a to-do list has a way of turning into a do-you-in list. So you may need to balance your to-do list with your to-be list—as in, what sort of calm, delightful, joyful person are you going to be today?
And remember: “to be or not to be” is not the question. You already are! The question is “how to be”—how to be alive, how to be human, how to be the one and only you, how to be present today.
Here’s a little ditty you can sing to remind yourself that as important as it is to do, you must balance that with to be.
Do-be-do-be-do, exchanging glances,
Do-be-do-be-do, daily romances,
No au-to-ma-ton—
Delight the whole day through!
Today, I will quiet my mind and take time to just be…to be still…to be mindful. I will balance the focus on what to do with a delightful focus on how to be. And who knows, I may even take a moment to be happy.
*The Dear Soul/Dear Life dialogs by J.M. Hawkins are used by permission. They are excerpted from his collection, Word From Soul City and were used in discussion groups that met in cities across America in the 1990s and early 2000s.
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