I Used To Be Okay with Being a Human Being
Told by a recovering human doing.
Little nodes suction cupped to my chest like octopi tentacles, trailing wires to the motherboard. The brain of electrodes and circuits.
It beeped to life, not to kill its prey but to find anything that might be killing me. Except it wouldn’t.
It couldn’t. It was all in my head.
The day I met this creature found me fleeing moments of tingling from the tip of my lips down to the toes in my feet. My heart would skip beats in the darkness of an unlit room.
But they weren’t from a forbidden kiss or long-time crush. It was from what seemed like just an ordinary day.
Except I had come to dislike ordinary. That’s what this contraption reminded me every, single day.
Three weeks later, it would leave me with inked paper and no diagnosis. But the true hunter’s shadow still lingers in the recesses of my mind.
This Holter monitor was my rite of passage. My coming of age as a human doing.
It wasn’t always like this. There was a time when I used to find great joy in the throes of summer.
I’d wake up, but no reminders would ding from my phone. I didn’t have a phone, at least not one that linked me instantly with 8 billion people and thousands of years of information.
No tasks would begin to cycle through my mind, an unceasing wave of unchecked boxes like dominoes falling in a room of mirrors. Except for maybe one.
[] Go to the community pool and try jumping off the diving board;
or
[] Call Bobby and see about building a new LEGO set;
or maybe
[] Beat dungeon in Legend of Zelda when Greg gets home from day camp.
My greatest fear of the day would be if my parents made stuffed green peppers for dinner. (Hated that chewy texture of acidic vegetation.)
I’d spend my day riding bicycles with my brother trying to outrace the wind-swept clouds that hid me from the sun we imagined angrier than the one in Super Mario Bros 3.
I’d watch an incoming Midwestern storm, find a hint of rain in the summer breeze and step off the porch to dance alongside droplets plopping like mortars of H20 on the heated concrete.
My world revolved around one neighborhood street, save for a half-day trip to the city or relatives that felt so, so … so far away. My human being liked that world.
Then I met my octopus friend. Not the Holter; no, the symbiote who laced the entirety of my being cell by cell, activity by activity.
But I cannot blame its attraction to me. I welcomed the hunter, intentionally spilling blood in the water.
My world expanded with one, then two, no, how about three jobs. Just one task wouldn’t do; money didn’t grow on a task.
My knowledge and to-dos sought 15-credit hours every four months. Daydream and you might fail the exam; soak up the words off the page like a sponge, squeeze them on the cellulose-lined bucket of short answers and multiple choice, and repeat until graduation day.
My friend circle became a Top 8 that became a wall of comments and feeds from 200 … 400 … 1,453 friends. Each a badge of honor, not a source of connection and play.
It would take some adjustment, but soon the hunter and Lane began to blur. It wasn’t the voice outside me that spurred me to do more, do greater; it was the small whisper in my skull.
A venomous aversion to the ordinary. With being okay.
I was told it was growing up. I was told it’s just how it has to be.
Children play for hours in the water. Adults need to be productive with their lives.
But no one told me a human being died that day. Human doings feed on such deaths.
You would think panic attacks and a doctor letting you know all those heart palpitations were happening inside your mind, your body screaming its sick and tired of your pace. You would think wearing a wired box like Tony Stark — albeit, without all the lights and arc reactor — would have re-circuited my thinking patterns.
They did. But only to a degree.
I cut back on my schedule. I decided I didn’t need to be part of three different student organizations.
I didn’t need to work until 11 p.m. on Friday and go up to the city to foster relationships with men and women who were displaced from a home at 10 a.m. the next day. I told myself the world wouldn’t be lost if I slept in just one day.
I was good at telling myself I was undoing this whole human doing. But I was like my childhood self thinking that picking a dandelion saved the lawn.
The roots of doing ran deep. And its ugly head would reappear when I moved to a new city.
I came in with all the intentions of singular work focus, singular community and singular life rhythm. Live in a community of new Americans.
But the taunt of “ineffective” slithered around my throat. I just couldn’t say no.
So, I mentored trade professionals on Mondays. Worked with college students on Tuesdays. Studied Arabic on Wednesdays. Shared a meal with one circle of friends on Thursdays. Hiked a mountain with a second circle on Fridays. And jumped like a tick between three or four social events on the weekend, getting my fix of some sense of success, meaning and purpose.
Far removed were the days of summer childhood. But who am I to complain about busy; such a notion is #firstworld, isn’t it?
I remember far simpler days. Sure, we didn’t have a refrigerator, so every day we would go out into the fields and pick the food we needed to make supper. But everyone was there. Our neighbors were there. My husband was there. And we would go to bed satisfied.
I was sitting in the two-bedroom apartment of my Syrian neighbors. Their Moroccan friend was recounting life in her homeland. Her son cut in.
— I never see my father anymore. Busy. Busy. Busy. He comes in the home from one job and then leaves 30 minutes later.
Like an MRI uncovering what my flesh won’t allow others to see, their words made me consciously aware of the inhuman persona that shared space in my body. I began to find words to name what had for so long become just a part of me, yet was truly not the me formerly locked memories started to recall.
I’m a human being, not a human doing.
Busyness isn’t par and course. It’s an active choice from a culture that finds value in what it can accomplish.
My merit isn’t wrapped up in 1.2M Instagram followers or the 10 years I never use PTO or the number of countries I scratch off a map like a lotto ticket.
To name burnout, to acknowledge the poison coursing through my veins is the beginning to recovery. Then I can trace the poison and see my life is not my own; the hunter lives in the shadows.
These shadows take many forms in American culture. They are formed from the labels of scarcity, unworthy, unlovable — to name a few.
We are taught you need to grab all the education you can to make a name for yourself, as if knowledge is a commodity that only has value if you pay for it. So, we drown ourselves in student debt, under such weight human doing festers as we now swallow the mountainous loans we constructed for ourselves, per society’s advice.
We are taught to make a name for ourselves, to get on that billboard or to hit that many viewers, only to find there’s always another that hiding like double vision. But you can’t stop now, can you?
We create our highlight-reel feeds yet always compare with those other ones we assume are their everyday. Why can’t you be them?
There’s a point where the message out there, for many of us, is no longer the white noise of the Internet or Netflix or tabloids. It exists in the dark, and in a sly twisted way, busyness gives us the sense of silencing the voice only to hand it a microphone.
But, in some of the briefly paused moments of inner dialogue, I remember my childhood: This voice wasn’t there, which means it doesn’t have to stay.
I neither presume that my life experience is the type of all human experience, nor do I begin to think that some of how it practically looks to discipline yourself can be translated in every human context. But what I can say regardless, being okay with being a human being hurts like all get out.
But knowing that burnout runs most severe in public service, nonprofit and religious sectors, I want to share what changes I have made since that conversation reminded me I am a human being, not a human doing.
Choose 1–3 primary outcome(s) per day at work and at home.
Remember how as I child you could repeat the same thing over and over again without growing tired? That part of you is still there, but it has been atrophying from neglect, like the difference between a runner training for sprints and a marathon.
As a team leader of coworkers in leadership development and community education, I have the choice to make my primary objective of each day be a desired outcome rather than a quota of tasks completed or hours logged. So, I choose 1 primary outcome of the day like, “Schedule lesson development meeting.” Sure, there are several tasks related to that like reviewing the material, drafting a meeting agenda and emailing the team; but once that objective has been reached, in conjunction with a larger strategic plan, I can end the day knowing I am moving toward an outcome.
Same goes for home projects: There are many stereotypical home owners who simultaneously neglect yet despise those “leaky faucet” projects. Everyone hates the drip, drip drilling deeper holes of to-do in one’s mind.
It doesn’t have to be accomplished tomorrow, and your identity doesn’t rest on it. But, what is one outcome that you can walk away with to keep moving forward in stewarding “home”?
The key is both breaking away from the grip of finding identity in accomplishments while breaking down larger goals in more deliverable tasks. Finding satisfaction in doing work well isn’t a bad thing; it’s part of being a human being.
Human doing says, “Keep going.” Human being says, “Today is enough.”
Connect with 2–3 primary individual/family units every week.
Social media is a great outlet to connect with those that distance makes harder to see in close proximity. But its mainstream effect has been this sense of FOMO (fear of missing out) or expanding a network that is not historically something a human being has ever maintained.
Often, this leads to a sense of knowing many people without being known. It creates instances of much small talk without ever having a feeling that your soul is known.
For me, this looks like making sure every week I have connected at some level beneath mere facts (what I have done) to the feelings, dreams and fears that rattle around like pin balls in my head. I do it with my spouse, with a close friend and with a couple that me and my wife know well.
This is where social media can be an incredible resource toward human interaction rather than a rift for isolation. I can connect with a close friend over Skype or FaceTime even if they no longer live in the city I call home.
This also doesn’t mean having a lot of connections is bad, but it grants me the freedom to be okay that my calendar doesn’t have space for a Facebook event from someone I haven’t spoken with in five years. Or, it grants me reconnection with that friend, while ensuring those other primary relationships have been pursued.
Human doing says, “You’re missing out.” Human being says, “These few are my world.”
Pursue outlets of recreating, playing and resting 4–5 times every month.
In many ways, this is quintessential to resurrecting a human being. When this doesn’t happen, the seductive call to do more and connect more entices me easily.
This also doesn’t have to happen overnight and can start in more bite-sizable outcomes like “take a 15-minute walk after returning home from work” or “spend 15-minutes doing what you call a hobby.” The goal is to pursue something that is simply beautiful but not necessarily useful.
It fights against the critic of pragmatism, of utility. It invites this sense of being.
The Enneagram has been a huge resource for me as I pursue what this means and mentor my team members toward what it means for them. We all tend to either be suffocated by a lack of stillness, silence or solitude.
The best assessment for answering which of these suffocates you is determining which of these forms of “being” magnify the voice of that human doing part of you. For me, it is stillness, believing the world will continue spinning without my accomplishments.
For you, it might be believing the world will continue spinning without you helping someone or figuring out the perfect answer to every lingering question. Finding rhythms of what I see as space helps root out what picking at the surface can never do.
On my team, this looks like incorporating eight hours of rest into their job description. Sometimes to kill the human doing virus, you have to mask the solution with what appears to be its own poison.
Ironically, when human beings act out of a place of being rather than doing, they tend to be more productive. It’s like we were meant to be.
This story is ongoing. I haven’t fully recovered the human being of my childhood, but I am no longer ignorant to whose voice ever tells me I need to do more to be more.
I mute its voice as I gulp the summer air and listen to my soul sigh. This is who I truly am.
