Nondoing- A Daoist Option For When You Are Offered a Beer At a Party
It is better to wait for the tide to pull your boat to shore than to force yourself to pull it to shore.
Elterwater and Langdale Pikes by A. Heaton Cooper.
The whole problem of life is that there are an infinite amount of possible choices to be made and no user manual. Folks prop up specific books, philosphies, and people as being the answer key to this test. Of course they’re all bullshitting. At best, someone can say “Hey I did this, and I’m happy. Maybe if you do this, you’ll be happy too.” Something like that would be the most honest way to suggest a choice. I’ll try and follow that same honest way of suggesting, nondoing. Inaction or intentional nondoing is an often overlooked option for each step in life’s path. At the very least, it is an approach that can bring a feeling of peace and joy especially to people who feel their actions ultimately amount to just adding more stress to life.
Everything we do is an action, an intentional choice. Even if it’s an unconcsious action, at some point that intentional choice was made, and then our brains automated it. Let’s look at having a beer at a party or trying to not drink a beer. These are choices we don’t even think about or question. When it comes to something like accepting a beer at a party or trying to avoid having a beer at a party, it becomes silly when we look at through the Daoist lense of nondoing. Accepting a beer and trying to not accept a beer are both doing. As soon as we step into nondoing, there are no more choices to be made, just observation. Life suddenly becomes easy. We can joyfully accept or decline the beer with peace.
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Tags: mindfulness , life