Whatever flavor we favor – spirals, energy, power, needs – there’s a general consensus shape they all form, and it makes life into a double helix of sorts, wherein one visits and revisits similar themes through life but behaves differently as s/he goes.
When we consider the difference between being and doing, doing and being, it may be helpful to begin when we begin.
As babies, we are being much more than we are doing. We seemn’t to have an activity important as eating and few conscious distractions from it.
That sure changes, eh?
Most of us do, do, do in pursuit of comfort (without which there is mostly being) and then achievement, however defined, and then affluence, however defined.
Along that pathway, time (the small ‘t’ in oh so many linear formulas) becomes a thing we attempt to manage while being managed wholly by it. At its essence, time is a measure of change – and we sense that, even if we caren’t how scientists and philosophers define it.
What more than change is achievement, after all, and how often do we achieve anything without including time in its description?
“We got that project done ahead of schedule” / “I got the car washed on Saturday” / “He lived to a hundred”
The secret to managing time, after some relative level of achievement, it seems, is to be, rather than do, and if the secret to enjoying that state isn’t a form of complacency, why, it’ll do till a form of complacency comes along.
Once a person has done enough – whether that’s a million things or five – that person is able to be, finally, rather than do. And once a person is being, rather than doing, time becomes an acquaintance s/he hears from only infrequently, rather than a punitive, scolding reminder of our boundless inadequacy.
Whether timelessness causes relaxation or relaxation causes timelessness, one isn’t often seen unaccompanied by the other.
“How the hell am I supposed to relax with so much I have to get done?”
I don’t know, truly I don’t, but I do hope you can finally relax when you get done doing.