Before You Become More, Learn to Be

“Meaningless! Meaningless!” ... “Utterly meaningless!” What do people gain from all their labors at which they toil under the sun? Generations come and generations go, but the earth remains forever. 

The sun rises and the sun sets, and hurries back to where it rises. The wind blows to the south and turns to the north; round and round it goes, ever returning on its course. 

All streams flow into the sea, yet the sea is never full. To the place the streams come from, there they return again. 

All things are wearisome, more than one can say. The eye never has enough of seeing, nor the ear its fill of hearing. What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. 

Is there anything of which one can say, “Look! This is something new”? It was here already, long ago; it was here before our time. No one remembers the former generations, and even those yet to come will not be remembered by those who follow them.

- Ecclesiastes 1:2-11

Life isn't measured by accomplishment. And it’s certainly not about white-knuckling to the end. You don’t have to do more. Or become more. The point is simply this: learn to be.

Too often, we get caught up in doing, pulled by the existential need to become ‘someone’ in an attempt to grasp meaning. Yet this attempt is like trying to drink water from a bottomless cup. You may taste a few drops here and there, but you will never be satisfied. 

Satisfaction doesn’t come from striving. It comes from surrender.

The Endless Striving

How do you learn to be when life keeps pushing you to become more? Legacy quietly hums in the back of most minds, even if you’re not consciously thinking of it. Deep down, you want to be remembered, even if only by those you love. And you want to be remembered well. 

Some want to be remembered for millennia, as if it would make a difference in the end. 

We all dance our way to the grave—some peacefully, some frantically—but we all arrive just the same. 

If this is the case, why do you strive in life? Why carry the pressure to constantly improve, chasing more and more, mistaking growth for the endless grasping of temporal things? 

The idea of a final, finished self is an illusion, as I explored in last week's piece, “The Truth About the Finished Self.”

You strive endlessly because something always feels like it’s missing: a lack of money, poor health, or fractured relationships. You think, “If I could just fix these things, then life would be okay.” 

But the point of life isn’t to fix everything. It’s to learn to be. To be fully yourself, no matter the circumstances. 

It’s learning to be joyful and at peace within yourself. 

In doing so, you begin to resolve your issues, not by changing what’s outside, but by how you relate to the situation internally. 

When you learn to be present, your life begins to change, because presence changes everything. 

The Forgotten Power of Presence

The other day, I found myself quietly wondering: What does it mean to just be? What would that even look like? Then I imagined: What if I could step outside myself, like a butterfly leaving its cocoon? If I could shed this body and become something entirely new, what would that be? 

As I pondered these thoughts, I realized: I would become spirit—pure consciousness. To have the ability to know all, see all, be all. Not to gain power, but to feel everything fully. To feel the joy of a moment shared across thousands of lives and the grief of worlds collapsing. 

Without judgment, without praise or shame. To sit and witness eternity in all its beauty. To feel pure love radiating from every direction. And in doing so, I would learn to be. 

Instead of trying to become, I’d simply accept what is, and in that surrender, I would become.

When an acorn falls to the ground, it doesn’t strive to become an oak tree. It never thinks, “I must become a mighty oak.” It simply lies there, no worry, no guilt, no shame. 

Eventually, with enough water and sunlight, it begins to sprout—no striving required. 

Or take the lion: he never wonders if he’s the king. He just is. He doesn’t try to earn his title or prove his worth. He simply lives, and we call it greatness.

Everything in nature—except humans—is content with simply being. Even at the edge of violence, the lion does not seek glory. He acts. Then returns to stillness. 

It’s their returning that reveals their presence. They can’t help it. It’s instinct. The lion sleeps when tired. Hunts when hungry. Fights for survival. It never questions its existence, because existence is enough.

Returning to Presence

Presence is simply the act of returning, again and again. It’s realizing your thoughts or emotions were hijacked by worry, doubt, and fear, and bringing yourself back to the moment anyway, even when it’s uncomfortable. 

Being present isn’t a task; it’s a skill that develops over time with patience, but it doesn’t emerge on its own. You’re either forced into it—like Viktor Frankl in the Nazi concentration camps—or you willingly seek it out. 

When you stop trying to change and learn to be, you encounter a paradox: change begins to happen without effort. 

Embodying presence means you no longer strive to become because you realize you already are. 

You are everything. 

But living in the body—this temporary shell—makes it easy to forget who you truly are. 

It’s challenging for Western thinkers to grasp the idea of simply being. But listen to the elders of Eastern traditions, those steeped in deep meditation and prayer, and you begin to see: the world isn’t what you thought. 

But to grasp this requires something we often resist: faith. 

Faith, however, doesn’t mesh well with our Western minds, which are dominated by the demand for empirical evidence offered by science.

As such, Western minds have nearly divorced all associations with faith. Because faith requires believing in what one cannot see, and if you can’t see something, it must not exist. 

That’s the rule, isn’t it?

Ironically, that’s a paradox, because science also requires faith, faith in theories grounded in theoretical mathematics. But science still cannot prove many of those theories. Yet, we treat them as facts.

This staunch belief in only what you can experience through your five senses is why you struggle to find presence. After all, what is presence? What does it mean to experience presence so fully that Heaven touches Earth?

Learning to Be

The power of presence emerges when you embrace the stillness of both body and mind. Yet many struggle with stillness because they have not trained their bodies to be at peace when resting. Nor have they trained the mind to follow. 

Instead, the monkey-mind—what Eastern mystics call the chaotic mind—swings between thoughts of ‘should haves’ and ‘would haves’, worry, fear, regret, and the gnawing belief that sitting in silence is a waste of time. 

Our culture is performance-based, built on a constant striving to become more. No wonder we struggle to simply be. But you don’t have to renounce the world or live in a monastery to learn to be.

You can begin exactly where you are—no plane ticket required. A different life starts with a single breath.

The path begins with something simple: sitting in meditation, or learning to steady the breath through gentle breathing techniques. In meditation, you learn to observe—not to resist your thoughts or wrestle your body into silence, but simply to be present without performance.

You simply observe what’s happening and let go. You let go of everything you’ve been holding onto and rest in the stillness already within you, hidden beneath the layers of chaos you’ve carried through life.

As you merge with the stillness, a quiet wonder for life awakens in you. You realize there’s no need to become someone new. You’ve been enough all along. 

You begin to embody your true self. And gradually, you learn to live in the present moment, beyond your meditation or breathing practice. 

This is presence. Not striving. Not escaping. Just being.

Thank you for reading. I hope this message brought clarity and peace. 

Until next time,

Josiah

For more information and resources, visit josiahthibodeau.com