Recently, Bill and I set out on a wide, wild northern Adirondack lake devoid of vacation homes, water skis and other marks of civilization. We hoped the dense night fog would lift with morning sun’s arrival. With faith and a dash of foolhardiness, we paddled into a pearly white with no horizon. Beyond the bright green tip of my kayak there was only nothingness; no water, land or sky. Our doing consisted of checking the compass affixed to the bow and commenting on shadowy, possible landmarks as they emerged in the gray mist of dawn. Loons drifted into view then disappeared. Birds chirped in trees we could not see. We had an idea of where we wanted to go but were uncertain of when or if it would appear.
How difficult to trust in the inevitable arrival of an unseen goal. We prefer markers measuring how far we have gone and how much farther we need to go to reach any longed for achievement. And what about those amorphous, loosely defined ambitions? Stitched-together images become our dreams and set us out on journeys into the unknown. Visualized scenarios of a promised landscape yielding treasures or experience keep us paddling, keep us doing.
Most tasks, ambitious or mundane, are conceived as a means to an end and, no matter how elaborate or overblown, are tied to some basics of survival. We might not need the castle when a house would do, and expensive jewelry does not directly keep us safe from harm, yet we experience the pursuit of pleasure and power as basic human needs. What we believe we need directs our doing and what we do defines us, gives form and meaning to a life, provides material for first the resume and then the obituary.
The “What do you want to be when you grow up?” of childhood mutates into the “And what do you do?” at every initial meeting of adults. We learn that identity is essential. Some identity we pursue and some attaches, unbidden, like barnacles covering our soul. We both rely on and rail against that carapace, that branding mask. In the struggle over definition, pride and shame vie for dominance.
We learn to perform for the reward of praise or to avoid the threat of disapproval. “Smile!” we are told when the camera appears, and we obey or bear the consequences. That perpetual and omnipresent outer camera collecting data about our behavior spews out verdicts of pride or shame according to the presiding culture of our environment.
“What have you been doing?” The adult asks the child.
“Nothing,” says the child, keeping the moment sacred, secret, out of judgment’s view, uncertain if the doing in question would spin the dial to Shame or Pride Identity according to adult criteria.
There was a time and place when summer days could unfold in idle, unobserved activity with no aim other than arriving for the evening meal. No one was planning, watching, evaluating and posting evidence of my activities. I meandered through the season doing nothing of note or significance. Even in my days at 4-H camp I was allowed to wander outside the realm of scheduled games and competitions. I hung out in the ceramics studio with the wizened witch who befriended me or sat by the stream, catching frogs and salamanders or building dams. I could do nothing and no one noticed or cared.
What a contrast to my life today. We maintain busy schedules laden with things we are doing, things we should be doing and things we try not to think about as we stay the course and aim towards our elaborate dreams. We cannot avoid the outer camera flash of others’ interpretations and assertions of our identity. Our work as psychotherapists and artists requires observable connection to other humans and evaluation is necessary to succeed.
Acknowledging that we cannot escape evaluation, I am more centered in myself if I can remember to visit that field that Rumi describes, beyond “right doing and wrong doing.” I can sometimes go there in meditation and meet the nothingness between focus on my breath or awareness of those chattering monkey thoughts. In the flow of intense concentration I leave behind the inner critic, with her camera and pad of notes, collecting evidence to judge my doing.
There have been crisis times in my life when the scaffolding of the then current identity was ripped away and I felt naked, exposed, in the free fall of uncertainty. In those moments when all is in flux, fluid and amorphous, we can briefly touch the warm glow of what remains when all seems lost. We realize that the inner camera, recording such things as satisfaction, curiosity, connection and contentment, is separate from the outer camera, recording for the inevitable show-and-tell that will solidify the interpretation of those experiences.
Lao Tzu wrote, “The way to do is to be.” Can we tolerate for a moment the nothingness of being and doing without evaluation of our accomplishments? The fog of our undefined reality will soon lift and reveal the landscape and the familiar markers of our particular world. It is useful to remember: Lost in fog, we still exist.
