Being vs. Doing
Posted on December 22, 2011 by Blake Leath
A couple weeks ago, I watched Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life.
Talk about "Give a Mouse a Cookie!"
It's not really a movie. It's more an exposition on existentialism.
Sure, it's presented via film, but it's primarily a hallucinogenic journey from creation to destruction, with Texas and philosophy residing somewhere in between.
The early lines about two ways to live, via grace or nature, are breathtaking. And, as the journey unfolds, similarly heartbreaking.
But the film led me on a Terrence Malick bender, proceeding from The Tree of Life to Badlands, Days of Heaven and The New World (which was particularly rewarding because, after devouring A Land as God Made It and A Kingdom Strange [both by James Horn, about the Jamestown and Roanoke colonies, respectively], I had also just returned from an emotional day at Jamestown Colony).
After growing up in Waco, TX, Malick graduated from Harvard with a degree in philosophy. He then attended Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, but he did not complete his doctoral work, opting instead to drop-out, become a journalist, writer, itinerant professor at MIT and, surely, one of this century's most reclusive, enigmatic, brilliant directors. His personal story is marked by lows and highs, from his pianist brother's crippling his own hands and eventual suicide to Malick's three marriages and his ultimately directing what many regard as the finest film ever made, Days of Heaven, which proved that 'the magic hour' right before dusk can be the most gorgeous time to roll tape.
Malick's own inquiries, evident in everything he has touched, are about Being. In fact, one of his best known scholarly works is a translation of Martin Heidegger's (1889-1976) Vom Wesen des Grundes, published by Malick as The Essence of Reasons. Heidegger, a controversial figure then and now, explored the meaning of Being, determinism, our role in the world ("in situ," as it were)--and the extent (or limited extent) to which we can be, in short, "masters of our domain," advocating instead that we are probably just "leaves in a stream."
These films by Malick, the books by Horn, my introspective day at Jamestown (during which, virtually alone for hours, I felt like an alien landing on earth some 300 years after it imploded)--coincide with my 42nd birthday--placing me (God willing and health permitting) smack-dab between my own creation and (carnate) destruction at the intersection of Texas and philosophy. Mid-life, to be sure.
As I've written before, our daughter articulated her first, deep existential angst about one month into 1st Grade. As I lay her in bed one night, her heavy head on the pillow, tinkly music drifting in the background, she stared up at me with her big round eyes and inquired (God as my witness), "Daddy, is this all there is to life?" Perplexed, I asked, "What, Sweetie?" Sighing, she said, "You know...dressing, eating, sitting in plastic chairs all day listening to a teacher. Coming home to eat, undress and do it all again tomorrow?"
Needless to say, I was first taken aback.
Who spoke these words?
In return, I was speechless.
There is, to life, a number of days in plastic chairs.
And a number of hours standing in line.
Along with perhaps 87,600 meals.
And 29,200 showers.
And, if you want them and are fortunate, perhaps 2.5 kids, a couple cars, a house in the cul-de-sac, a few diplomas on the wall and all the rest.
Sure, yes, there is much about life that is pedestrian, pragmatic, prosaic.
As we spoke, for what amounted to perhaps one hour, we proceeded to move beyond these ideas though, at which point I tried (speaking to a six-year-old) to describe meaning, belief, service, faith, hope, love and all the rest. And, very briefly, to describe a sense of calling, living a life on purpose, and talents. (Hey, she asked. We're too far in to turn back now, I reasoned.)
Looking back over the nearly four years that have lapsed since then I can say, with a degree of shock, that it did seem to click. She was listening. She more than heard me--she somehow, through her tiny ears and wet eyes, understood.
And her journey, like mine--yours--ours, is often about Being more than Doing.
We are trained, most of us, to focus on "behavior," as it is, from a reductive standpoint, observable and, therefore, "measurable and coach-able."
But I must say, as I get older, that any worthwhile reflection on one's personhood begins much deeper. Not at the 'genetic' level, mind you, but certainly at the 'atomic' level of, say, one's Being and Beliefs.
To make this demonstrable, consider the hypocrite. The politician, for example, who Is and who Believes one way, yet consistently Behaves obversely.
More slippery still, consider the person who Behaves well toward you, demonstrating wonderful actions, when all the while a brew of anger, hate, jealousy or vengeance roils right beneath the surface.
Psychologists and philosophers have wrestled with and written about these "veneers" and "masks" for millennia, and they always will.
The questions of "Who am I" and "What do I believe" undergird and give shape to our very existence.
They precede Behavior and, to my current way of thinking, actually supersede it. True, I care about Behavior. I/we all do; should; will. Agreeing with the cognitivists (e.g., Maslow, McClellan, McGregor, Herzberg) more than the behaviorists (e.g., Pavlov, Skinner and all the rest), I believe that, while actions and reactions matter, behaviors are primarily symptomatic in nature, with one's starting disposition being more causal. (Yes, yes, there are limitless exceptions, from seatbelts and smoking to aromatic foods, ringing doorbells and vibrating phones, but these do not dissuade me from my 51/49 lean.)
As I reflect on Malick's films, the colonists who forged this nation, the founding fathers who (nearly 160 years later) canonized its liberties...and even David Fincher's interpretation of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, I am convinced beyond certainty that Being and Beliefs, while not quite prologue, are immeasurably paramount.
When I coach someone who has had "a change of heart," his/her ears and eyes are wide open.
When I coach someone who "intellectually understands," yet maintains a concrete bunker around his/her heart, we both fail.
I share these ruminations in the magic hour of 2011, as dusk is coming and, with it, the sun is slipping below the horizon.
All too soon, 2011 will be but a distant memory and we, like the rooster, will be crowing about 2012 and all that dawns ahead.
May this New Year be your best one yet, so abundant with blessings that your storehouse nails pop clean out, boards bursting at the seams, flat-out overflowing.
But more than this, much more, my hope and heart and mind and prayer is this: may you find and be at peace with your own Being and Beliefs.
So much that, should this or that be your last hour, you might rest your head on a soft pillow knowing, tomorrow and beyond, there is unquestionably Meaning, Reason and Hope well beyond the plastic chairs.
It is the way of grace.