Chopping Wood and Carrying Water
It's almost exhausting to me to listen to people talk about all they "have to do" to "get to there."
"Where we're at" is never, ever enough.
Since I started the social media brand Get the F*ck Off and the podcast of the same name, I've ended up in a lot of online spaces with personal development people, a lot of them all wound up.
Many of them have conversations about fighting the internal desire to be doing and doing and doing, as if the endless cycle of doing can somehow, in some way, complete us.
"When I get there, that'll be when it's all worth it."
And through it, we're never just satisfied with doing our work and being done. Doing what we have to do today, and then saying "this is fucking great" because we exist, here, now.
There's always somewhere else we need to be, for whatever reason. The satisfaction never seems to reach us, never seems to permeate and satiate, because there's still so much left to do.
What's so fucking wrong with chopping wood and carrying water?
Now before you go off to TikTok and abandon this piece, please- humor me.
Over the summer I spent hours on my long runs listening to Ram Dass. I bought myself a copy of Be Here Now, and it wasn't until I was on the road and spending a lot of idle hours in Santa Fe that I got around to finishing it.
Ram Dass talks about this concept of Karma Yoga, the yoga of daily life. He uses the example of chopping wood and carrying water, as a basic example of how what we're doing right now is the sacredness of existing.
From Be Here Now:
"I am a doctor… a student…a drop-out…IT’S ALL THE SAME GAME. Don’t let that offend you, but…the external world is all the same…it’s all the external world! People often say to me:
“I would really like to do sadhana, but…I’m a teacher now. If I could only finish being a teacher, I could do sadhana.”
BALONEY! You’re either doing sadhana or you’re not. Sadhana is a full time thing that you do because there is nothing else to do. You do it whether you’re teaching, or sitting in a monastery…whether you’re lying in bed, going to the toilet, making love, eating…EVERYTHING is part of waking up. Everything is done without attachment. Another way of saying it is: It’s all done as consecrated action….it’s all dedicated…it’s all sacred."
Here in the states, it's like there's some arbitrary caliber of action that bridges the line between "worthwhile work" and "not worthy work."
We spent the first year of a global pandemic high praising grocery store workers, and yet now, do we yet still praise grocery store workers? Or do we damn grocery store workers for only working at a grocery store?
My family did this to me a lot- damning my profession in service work because it was service work. But we hold sacred the spaces where we as humans sit and share a meal. Why is it that those who are eating are any more sacred than those doing the serving?
Why isn't doing the daily tasks of chopping the wood and carrying the water simply enough to bring peace to the never satisfied Western ego?
I woke up this morning, snowed in at my friends' place in Utah. Little four cylinder, two-wheel drive Honda wasn't gonna be getting out of the unplowed cul-de-sac today.
One of my friends also got stuck this morning just trying to back out of the driveway.
So, what did we do?
We shoveled. I started on the pavement. He grabbed a brush and started clearing off my car.
Around 1:00 p.m. he had had enough of being stuck and hungry, and wanted to venture out to get us breakfast burritos. We had cleared enough for him to slide down the street.
I continued, bit by bit, to remove the snow from the driveway. By the time he returned, I had cleared a beautiful entryway.
Then, we went inside, and shared a great meal in the warmth of their home.
What was I doing besides literally carrying water? In the morning hours, when he previously had been stuck, a neighbor came to give his car a push. What was she doing besides karma yoga? What was this, except the majesty and sacredness of daily life? The way we all work together, all take care of one another?
I was taught the same garbage as the rest of you- that there's somewhere for me to get. And God, what a fucking relief it was when I gave all of that up, because I realized that I'm already here!
I'm here, today! Today, I'm here, doing my work, chopping wood and carrying water.
I write these emails and I send them. I do my work and then I'm done with it. People open them, or they don't. Some read them. Some don't. Those who read them, some feel something or learn something. Some don't. But what happens after I act, that's the ripple. That's part of it all. There's nothing else for me to do.
I chop my wood and carry my water.
I know as I act, as I do my work, that the ripples benefit the whole, whether it's carrying actual water, helping my friend get out of the driveway to get me a fucking great breakfast burrito, or sitting here, writing to you all.
Where you are at is sacred, noble, and great. If you're aligned, what bliss.
There is no magical place off on the horizon for you to get to. You're here.
That's it.
All I have.
If you have the thought "I'm allllllmost there. It's so close I can taste it," then baby, you're not there. You're not close. Today is the day, right now is the time, and there isn't a single thing that you can do to achieve what you want except understanding that everything you do today is sacred.
Carry your water, pull out of the driveway, and be here now.
Stay beautiful,
Andee
