We Are Human Beings, Not Human Doings

Elaina Giolando is currently one of my favorite bloggers. I really enjoy reading her articles on Life Before Thirty. Her story is almost fairytale like, where she leaves a corporate and safe job in America, for a more edgy one that allows her to travel the World, from country to country. She is a passionate traveller, who has backpacked through every continent. Elaina is a source of inspiration with her entries that sometimes remind of a journal and other times you feel like you’re speaking to a longtime friend. She’s keen on giving career advice and on speaking about life in general as well.

In one of her last articles – Are you perpetually productive? – She strikes the reader with one simple sentence:

Aren’t we called human beings, not human doings?

This sentence is so obvious, but yet so powerful and enlightening. How are we “being”? We write to-do lists over to-do list for every aspect of our lives: personal, work, family, vacation. Some people have ticked-off already all the items in their Christmas To-Do list and are already laying about their next to-do list for the New Year.
It is good to put black on white your resolutions and give a structure to your life, having a plan.
When we tick-off an item we feel really proud and productive, but after a while a void fills our hearts. Our life is so shaped by to-do list that we forgot what it is really about this long, crazy ride we are all experiencing together: it is about being. Being present and living in the moment. Enjoying every second of it.

This is going to be my only item for 2016: be, in every declination of it.
Be present, be in the moment, and be there for the people who need me. Be constructive. Be happy. Be adventurous. Be a dreamer. And last, but not least be myself.