Amanda's Approach
When you're almost done with college, you look for morsels of affirmation like you look for morsels of chocolate chips in a bag of trail mix. Except you're blindfolded and the trail mix is on fire and you can't find any oven mitts. Seniors deal with a lot of obstacles. On any given day, your unsuspecting fingers could grab hold of a gooey, half-melted chocolate chip; however, it's more likely that you get stuck with a chia seed. I've learned that when you do stumble upon the good stuff, you cling to it and you smile, because who knows what kind of unsalted mystery nut waits in the next handful.
So, my latest morsel comes from Amy Poehler and something she told me when we were out to lunch. Just kidding, it's found in her book "Yes, Please!" She writes something that continues to jolt me out of my senior year woes. It tells me I don't need to look for affirmation or worry if I'm good enough or well-quipped for the real world. That's not what it's all about. Here's what it is about, according to Poehler.
"You do it because the doing of it is the thing. The doing is the thing. The talking and worrying and thinking is not the thing," she says.
Even as I write this, I gulp these words in and I look around for people to notice the light bulb sparkling above my head. The words take shape like one of those really serious quotes etched underneath a statue somewhere. It's a gooey morsel, and it's one I'm holding onto for awhile.
On certain dreary days, we are all faced with a stuck feeling. We question why we wake up, why we get dressed and why we're going in a certain direction. We look at our to-do lists and our assignments and we can start to ask, am I really getting anywhere? Why am I doing this? But, then...
"You do it because the doing of it is the thing."
Maybe the elusive "thing" we're all chasing after - the reason behind our chosen majors, the "why" question, our motivating factor - isn't about what we end up doing. Maybe it's about what we do right now, doing it well and not caring about the other stuff. There's no room for overanalyzing or worrying when you go all-in with something.
What I'm saying is we have to find the thing that sets a fire inside of this, that keeps us sane and stitches us back together when we're unraveling. And then, we have to do it. We have to do it in a way that's fully present and we have to strip away anything that slows us down. We have an obligation to not put this kind of thing off. End of story.
For me, one thing is writing. Writing doesn't become writing until I write. It's just another noun until I make it into a verb. It doesn't become the thing I love unless I attach action to it.
Sometimes when my schedule permits, I find a spot on the carpeted floor by our fireplace and cross my legs and I write about my day. I listen to that old song that fits like a sweatshirt and type in Georgia font and I try not to edit the weird phrases that spill out of me. I feel most like myself in this scene. Ah, this is the thing. This is the thing.
I don't know if it will land me a job or if people will ever read my words or if it's getting me anywhere, but I do it. I don't need a reason. It's easy to feel like we need a reason or we need motivation. It's easy to mistake loving the result of our passion instead of loving the process. It's easy to mistake our nouns for verbs. It's easy to do something just so we can tell our friends about it or so we can add it to our resume.
One of my favorite authors says the key to good writing is noticing. My pastor says life is better when we're loving people. A musician I like reminds me that, "sometimes the only thing you learn is that life keeps moving on." The common denominator is the "-ing." Or so I'm told, I haven't done math in awhile.
Those last three letters remind me that the best things happen in motion and are in progress.
We need to put emphasis on the doing and all of the "-ings" that light a spark in our eyes. Our lives are not about nouns or accomplishments or the future titles next to our names. Our lives are about a series of conjugated verbs. Our lives are about conscious decisions to revel in the right now, in the doing. The result is not the thing; it's a bonus point. It doesn't matter how the thing turns out. Getting there is the good stuff, the putting one foot in front of the other and simple acts that taste like chocolate.