Not sure what you should be doing? Try being instead

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been slowly painting our hallway and landing. I bought the paint about six months ago, and it felt like such a chore that I’d been putting it off. But finally doing it has been a revelation for several reasons. Firstly, I had forgotten how much I enjoy painting. It’s quiet and soothing, and I find myself easily getting into a lovely flow state. Secondly, while I paint I often listen to podcasts on my headphones, so I have been catching up on all sorts of things. And finally, it has been reminding me of what I think is one of the most important aspects of unschooling. That the quality of our presence with our children is far more important than what we do.

This is something I realised in our first year of unschooling. What I found particularly difficult then was allowing my children to get on with their own things without interfering. I just couldn’t shake off the feeling that a good mother would be constantly doing things to enhance their children’s day. This would result in me making unhelpful suggestions and generally stopping things from following their natural flow in my desire to make sure everyone was happy and “doing” something.

Sometimes, if I was in that slightly nervous “what’s everyone doing?” mood, I realised that the best thing I could do was to just not be in their space. So, I would make myself a mug of coffee, settle in at the kitchen table and get on with some writing. As I relaxed into my writing and took my focus away from my children, things would start to feel more spacious and relaxed. I noticed that I would get little visits from them. They would pop in to tell me something they had just learned, ask me a question, share an idea, or just come for a quick chat. And, since I was happy and immersed in something that fulfilled me, I was able to hear their thoughts without judging or trying to make something happen.

When I first noticed this shift, it felt quite magical. How much naturally arises when the space and the mood are right—free from goals, expectations and worries. Clucking around like a mother hen, organising, commenting and suggesting, may have made me feel like I was being a good mother, but it left no room for the children to feel into what was right for them.

My children are older now, but as I paint, I notice that same quality in the house. As I inhabit this calm, happy space of my own, they come and tell me things. I pause the podcasts often to answer a question, hear about an idea or watch a video someone wants to share with me. One of them says I deserve a break and makes me a cup of tea. One of them even admires my handiwork and is inspired to go and spring clean their room.

As I painted the last coat on the last bit of wall yesterday, I found myself mulling this all over and I put on a podcast that I sometimes listen to, which is called The Way Out is In. Each episode, the cohosts, one of whom is a cheery Buddhist monk, discuss the works of Zen monk Thich Nhat Hanh. In this episode, they were talking about the concepts of “being” and “doing”, and how the quality of our presence determines the quality of our action.

We live in a society obsessed with doing and achieving, and our sense of worth and value are often so bound up in our doing that we feel lost when we are not striving to get somewhere. It’s so easy to then project this onto our children, so that their doing also comes from this place of striving or the sense that they must always be busy. But if we can just let go of the idea that we always need to be getting somewhere, and allow ourselves to sink into the present moment, we are likely to find two surprising things:

1) That when we first tend to the being, the doing can feel far more joyful (painting walls for example).

2) That it gives our children the space to also just be. And, from that space, the ideas and actions that come will be far more inspired and meaningful to them than anything we could ever come up with when we are in full-on doing mode.

For most of us, it’s a whole piece of relearning to value our being as much as our doing. I love this little reminder – in the words of Thich Nhat Hanh, “Don’t just do something, sit there!”. Easier said than done, but definitely worth the practice.