To Do or To Be

I have lived in Africa for one month short of 3 years.

I say that it is long enough to have learned something, and short enough to admit I don't really know anything.

As I prepare to leave this beautiful country, it is provided me many small moments for reflection both on my time here, and on what I've learned.

I am America, pure blooded middle class midwesterner.  My parents grew up in the mid west in hardworking middle class families.  They understood the value of hard work, and imparted it to me in wonderful ways.  My family taught me many fantastic values of the balance of hard work and time with the people you love. 

But I am also an American young person, in other words, my culture: school, town, TV, radio, work environment, peers, others around me imparted to me the fact that "to do is to be".

I started working at an office when I was 14 years old, I had to have a work permit to be able to be legally allowed to get paid.  I used my first pay check to pay to be able to go to homecoming.  I haven't really stopped working since.  (I have not always been "paid" for a lot of my work, but I usually work harder as a volunteer than I do when I have a paying job!) 

Now, I live in Africa.  And, after 3 years, it can't help but rub off on me.  Long, sunny, beautiful days.  Every day the same.  When rain comes, it is usually kind (though not always) and it rarely stays the whole day. In my experience of Africa, life is seen in circles.  The planting seasons, the growing season, the harvesting season, the dry season, repeat and repeat and repeat.  Life and times moves in circles, as does speech and stories, and conversation.  Circles happen, they aren't forces, they flow.  As with life and time, in Africa.

In my mind, America is a linear existence, ever moving forward to accomplish a new set of goals, it's a race against the ever ticking clock, furiously demanding that time is money and money is life.  Lines are pushed, forced, pioneered.  As with life and time, in America. 

And then we come to the definitions of our "self".  In America, we are defined by what we do.  Isn't that the first question you ask someone, after their name.  "What do you do?"  ... what is your job, your occupation, what consumes your time, where does your money come from, where does your sense of worth and satifcation lie?  ... For the majority of Americans what do we defines who we are.

 But I have seen that not to be the case here in Africa.  Many people do not have traditional employment, and there are a good number of people who are simply unemployed.  In my mind, they are represented by the men who sit under the mango trees all day.

And so this creates an essence of being.  Instead of demanding that you be defined by your activity, your production capacity, your work, you are simply defined by how you are, and how you chose to be. 

It is "I am" rather than "I do" ... and it is much, much more peaceful.

Over these last years I have tried to embraced this.  It grates against my inner person, battling with my hard wire perceptions that worth is connected to work.  Yet, through the frustration, there is something in me that knows the "to be is better than to do"... and as I have embraced this, I have seen its fruit. 

I don't always "do" much here.  I have probably wasted countless hours.  But I have strong, life giving relationships.  I have mentored over 40 young people, and seen them grow into amazing adults.  I have started an outreach which will be carried on for years, I have trained countless people, but what has mattered most in all of it is that I have chosen to "be" with the people I have worked with. I could talk and "work" all day, but that would not achieve anything.  Taking the time to be, to laugh, to sit, to listen, to play, to hug, to eat, to be.  That is what makes the difference.  That is what transforms.   Instead of demanding that the world around me works like my American trained mind does, I am able to embrace the fact that to do is not primary... to be is first.

At Cornerstone we have a wonderful saying which clearly captures this idea...

"What we do comes out of who we are" 

The idea is that relationships are first.  Patience, not production, is the highest virtue. Love truly wins, every time.  Or at least, it should.

No, I have not totally changed.  I still work hard, I still feel good after a long days work, I still run around sometimes acting like a very production driven American.  We don't change over night.

But I have learned.  Learned the value of time.  Learned to discover the value beyond occupation. Learned that there is so much more to life than doing, and that, even if it means having less, being should be the focus, doing should be a means to an end, not the definition of who I am. 

No one is right or wrong in this.  Americans need to learn to be, and Africans need to learn to use their time more productively.  We need to balance, but at the core of it all, I think that Africans understand more deeply the experience of being, and I chose to adopt that and try to live by it.