By Monica O'Neil. First appeared in The Advocate September 2008
“To do, or not to do” - is that the question?
I was sitting in a room filled with winter sunshine cut through by cold blasts of air. Peter McHugh and Keith Farmer, two guys I trust, were talking about living differently in our performance-based culture.
It got me thinking about my life and how I live it. When it comes to personality tests, I show up as one of those people who love to change things and always have several projects on the go. I love to DO STUFF.
In my thirties I would say, “If I don’t DO IT then who will?” And the thought that IT might not get DONE was abhorrent. When I turned forty, life truly began. I celebrated with a great dance party. I rekindled my love of bouncy castles and got involved in aid work. We even bought an old sports car. I loved my work. My family were all healthy and tucked in at night. Life was indeed good.
But the pace was too fast. I was frequently exhausted. Things came to a head one day when I received some bad news. Not really bad, but I had no energy to assimilate it. After collapsing in the presence of a good friend, I went home snivelly and dishevelled. I slept on and off for six weeks. After that, I crawled back to work in a bit of a fuddle and started to work out how to live and work again. I wasn’t good at DOING anything for a while. Not cooking, cleaning or being productive, and certainly not saving half the world. All of IT went on hold; for once, none of it got DONE.
In the middle of that snivelly, dishevelled and mostly incoherent time, I found out that I was loved. My darling husband loved me. So did my children, my brothers and sisters and my friends. I found a few people who didn’t, but they didn’t compare. Beneath it all, I discovered that God loved me. I could DO NOTHING and still know His presence and warm strength beside me and within me.
Living differently was the topic on the recent winter day I began with. Peter and Keith were speaking about living in place where we know we are loved. As Peter phrased it “I am loved simply because I breathe.” They challenged us to turn our back on the culture around us which moulds us towards performance. It was a powerful and timely call to all of us there to remind our hearts of God’s love and acceptance.
I think many of us, including me, forget that we are simply loved. We DO stuff because it helps us feel needed, important and useful. When we live like this, we often neglect BEING with the God who loves us, and those people he has placed in our world who love us.
The alternative? Not that we stop DOING, but that we stop doing in order to feel loved and useful. Instead, we shift to doing because we are loved and accepted.
“To be loved, or not to be loved” - perhaps that is the question?