Forget the noun, do the verb!

As most of you already know about me… I love playing with words. And this post is fun for me!

The difference comes down to whether a person thinks of themselves as a verb or a noun: are you defined by what you do or are you defined by what you are?

As a parent I can remember wishing for my youngsters to become ‘nouns’ -readers, teachers, writers, entrepreneurs. And I often forgot that they too, like me, were always evolving, always works-in-progress. The joy was often in whatever they were ‘doing’ – like dancing, painting, and sometimes just doing ‘nothing.’

Are you a writer (noun) or do you write (verb)? Many folks seem to think that you first call yourself a writer and then you can start writing. No, no, no. You do the stuff first, and then you can worry about what it is and who you are.

Even having defined myself as a noun such as teacher, entrepreneur, real estate agent, I remind myself that the growing, learning, and pursuing were really the verbs that made my life fulfilling.

And just as I am not a noun, neither is life! It is really “living”, not life. It is not love, it is loving. It is not a song, it is singing. It is not a dance, it is dancing. See the difference. Savor the difference.

P.S. And of course you may remember my February 28 post of this year, “Be-Do-Have?” where I said that we need to be before we can do and do before we can have… Consistency is not my forte and as Emerson said:

Have a rule in place

The reason is simple…personal rules give us a foundational structure by which we can live our lives. They eradicate indecision, temptation, and distraction and (paradoxically) create more freedom for us to do the things we love. It’s one of the reasons why I respect vegetarians who live by the personal rule that “Under no circumstances […]

2 intriguing thoughts on money…

I’ve found two very different thoughts on money that I want to share here! Number one: I read somewhere that money is “frozen time.” That the “stuff” we buy is free…that what we pay for is the peoples’ time to mine/grow/finance/ manufacture/manage/transport the stuff to us. Number two: what money can and does for us! […]

This old house…

A story is told about John Quincy Adams that strikes a special chord with me after my career in real estate and my ever-increasing age! When a friend asked 80-year-old Adams how he was, he replied, “John is very well, thank you. But the house he lives in is sadly dilapidated. It is tottering on […]

Questions that haunt me…

If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen defrocked, then doesn’t it follow that electricians can be delighted, musicians denoted, cowboys deranged, models deposed, tree surgeons debarked, and dry cleaners depressed? Why, in winter, do we try to keep the house as warm as it was in summer when we complained about the heat? How can a […]

Paws with perspective…

Murphy the Dog shares some delightful thoughts in his monthly column Murphy’s Dogma in the Science of Mind Magazine. I think you will enjoy this one! (And maybe see a lesson in it to be learned?) I have had some long talks with birds. All of them seem glad to have wings and beaks, and […]

Choosing can be hard

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Have to or…get to?

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It’s a noisy world…

We live in a crazy and noisy world. Every time we get in the car, we turn on the radio or CD. When we are home, we watch TV or get on the computer. The traffic going by on the street seems louder than ever. We live in a sensory overloaded world. When we are […]

Ben Franklin’s Wisdom

Benjamin Franklin was a pretty amazing guy, the quintessential Renaissance Man: scientist, inventor, author, musician, scholar, business man and politician. (Bifocals, anyone?) There’s one story from his life in particular that demonstrates his astute understand of human behavior. This story became so well-known it became known as The Benjamin Franklin Effect and was even cited […]