I’ll make a promise to you – I won’t try to improve you, to tell you that you need this from out there, or that you need to get rid of that from inside yourself. I’ll simply let you know what you’ve been hiding from by telling you what I hide from. It’s simply this: I don’t have to be successful anymore. I don’t even have to be happy. All I need do is be. I don’t have to accomplish anything. I don’t have to jump through anyone’s hoops. I don’t have to be anyone I’m not. All I have to do, is be. Being transcends doing.
But wait a minute. Don’t we have to contribute something while we’re here? Make an impact? Have kids, make money, go on TV, something, anything? In that limited amount of time that I have here, aren’t I supposed to make my mark? Isn’t that what the desperate flurry of activity across the world is all about? Don’t I have to keep busy so I’m not standing around, looking stupid? And of course, I must avoid that most miserable of outcomes: failure.
I say: Fail. The biographies of great people are shot through with it. And success? It’s just an opportunity to fail at a higher level. So fail. If you’re here to learn only how to succeed, you won’t learn as much. Failure teaches us more than success does. Any successful project is just the tiny bud at the end of a long root riddled with failure. Everything that comes before success is failure. So, fail. I’ve been rejected and I’ve failed more than I’ve been accepted or succeeded. What I’ve learned through lack of success is not to use the world and its achievements as my measuring stick. Though it will show that I never measure up, the world doesn’t have enough miles to measure me. The world will show I don’t rate, because it’s based on quantity and inequality, on bigger and better, on greater than or less than. The more you have, the better you do, the happier you’re supposed to feel. But there are always people who have more, who do better. If I live by the formula that more is better and winning is everything, then I can never be happy as long as there’s someone who has more toys or more trophies on the shelf. If you want to be happy, just be, Tolstoy said.
You don’t have to get anywhere or do anything or get anything. All you have to do is recognize what you are and always have been. Being transcends doing because doing always leaves an ultimate feeling of emptiness after the sense of accomplishment fades. It equates your worth with achievement. By validating yourself with works, you conclude you are what you do. Then, when you can no longer do, you’re no longer worth much. Or when you do bad things, you’re bad. Even if you do good, you’re only as good as your last act. When you are what you have, you have to have more to feel good. You compare yourself with those who have more, and end up feeling less than. Or maybe you lose what you’ve acquired, and feel bad about that.
A wise man once told me that if he could eliminate any word from the English language, it would be compare. Another wise man once said to me that the only valid use of comparing is to compare who I am today with who I was yesterday. To compare myself to someone else, to anyone else, is to place myself on a ladder where there’s always someone above, and always someone below. The rungs on that ladder are made of ego. It’s what envy and jealousy are composed of. And we all know that those green-eyed monsters can eat us alive.
Since we are now all that we’ll ever be, all we need do is examine the false beliefs about who and what we think we are. We need to strip away the layers of the false self and know who we really are, and in the knowing, just be with it. Being is probably the hardest thing to ‘do’ in all the world, since the world teaches us to do and to have. The world, the whole world, is nothing but an elaborate conspiracy designed to hide from ourselves and from each other the idea that we’re good enough just as we are.
How do I just be? The fact I have to ask myself this, which I do need to ask, shows just how out of touch with my being that I actually am. I’ve spun so much doing and having around myself that I’ve forgotten how to be. What do you do is usually one of the first questions someone asks us at a party. A rock just is, and we’re smarter than a rock.
When I want to know what it is to be, I look at a tree, or a mountain or a rock. It just is. What does one have to do in order to be? Nothing. The concepts of being and doing are anathema. For when you try to do in order to be, you deny your being. You remove yourself one step further from who and what you really are. You create another identity, another false self, another mask that obscures the real you. When you try to attain things, to acquire stuff, you’re really telling yourself that you’re not okay just the way you are.
To be is just to be open to what is. It’s to be open to the direction the universe moves in, and to flow in that direction like a leaf floats in a stream. It’s to know the rhythm the universe dances to, to synchronize with its tempo, to anticipate its bends and eddies, and to turn and swirl with them. It’s to realize that a regress is just a building to a greater wave, and that when it feels like you’re going round in circles, it only means you’re part of a whirlpool which is itself just a whorl in the course of a great river. Eventually, every drop of that river flows on to a vast ocean. To be is to know that when we’re moved one way, it’s because we’re part of a much greater current, which is really headed somewhere, flowing back into the self which is our own.
© 2024 by Michael C. Just
Mike’s novel, The Dirt: The Journey of a Mystic Cowboy, is available in softcover or eBook formats through Amazon.
You can purchase the book through this website. Or go straight to amazon at https://www.amazon.com/s?k=the+dirt+journey+of+a+mystic+cowboy&crid=1S40Q4BXSUWJ6&sprefix=the+dirt%3A+journey+of+a+m%2Caps%2C180&ref=nb_sb_ss_i_1_23
Mike’s other titles, including The Crippy, The Mind Altar, and Canyon Calls, are available through this website or through Amazon at https://www.amazon.com/-/e/B002
Four of his short stories have recently been published online:
Lies, Ltd. has been published by The Mystery Tribune @ Lies, Ltd.: Literary Short Fiction by Michael C. Just (mysterytribune.com)
The Obligate Carnivore has been published by the Scarlet Leaf Review @ Category: MICHAEL JUST – SCARLET LEAF REVIEW
I See You, Too has been published by the 96th of October @ I See You, Too – 96th of October
Offload, a short story about a man who can heal any disease, is now live and can be read at The Worlds Within at Offload – The Worlds Within