I think therefore I am. Is this not the best way to encapsulate being? You are. You are alive, you are in existence, you are a thinking being. Now what? 

Our world is so focused on doing. What did you do today? What are you doing tomorrow? What have you done lately? What did you do with your life? It seems as if we are defined by what we do, rather than how we are. 

I can understand this inclination towards emphasizing the doing. Doing is easy to observe. It’s usually objective. It’s quantifiable, and categorizable. It’s discrete, concrete, and easy to put into words. Johnny baked a cake. Suzie jogged three miles. Actions fit neatly into sentences that tell a clean story about our lives. Added together, our actions comprise what our life was - a proper package tied together with a shiny ribbon - how clean and tidy life is!

But we miss nearly the entire subjective experience with this focus on doing. By turning our attention toward actions, we miss out on the deeper and richer subjective experience of being. Yes, being is something that we can experience nearly all the time. But if we move too quickly, dwell in the past, or worry about the future, we lose touch with the present, where being lives. 

In this warm and deep pool of being lies all of the textured and nuanced feelings, emotions, and subjective experiences of existence. Existence doesn’t lie in an action - simply a tidy story lies there. Existence lies in experiences. It lies in the ups and downs, the joys and euphorias, the struggles and the hardships, the pain and the sacrifice. A robot can perform actions. A robot can tell you what it did that day. “I unhooked myself from my charger and I made coffee for the Jetson family. I then performed laundry services and ironed the clothes. I returned to my charger at 2pm for my daily recharge. I then prepared dinner for the family and told them jokes while they ate dinner.” There’s a lot of actions in that story. It could have just as well been a person telling you the story, aside from the charging part. But what would make someone know that it’s a person and not a robot doing these things? What makes being human significant if we only focus on actions? It’s the being, or subjective experiences that we’re missing. 

Here’s another example: “I awoke with a feeling of lightness. Images of my dream were still fresh in my mind, sprinkling ideas into my brain like fluorescent seeds of possibility in a fertile garden. I sprang out of bed and made breakfast with an eagerness that usually alludes me. I knew this day was going to be great.” Even with such a short excerpt, there is such a distinction between the two stories. The first story has many more actions, yet lacks the sensation of being. While the latter has fewer actions, yet is richer, more vibrant, stirs our emotions, conjures up images, and makes us resonate with this human experience. 

Doing is easy to talk about, quantify, explain and discuss. It’s simple, concrete, and cold. But being is what makes us human. It’s what gives life meaning. We didn’t evolve into higher conscious beings so that we could devolve into robots. Let us cherish these inner experiences; discuss them, share them, and squeeze out the meaning from them. 

Not everyone needs to do something to be respected or loved. Being is good enough.