Has Anyone Seen David?
A reflection on doing, being, and the larger plot
Yesterday someone showed me her calendar.
I wish I had a screen shot of it. It was astonishing.
Almost every available space was filled—appointments, responsibilities, meetings, things that had to be done, people who needed something, places she needed to be.
There was almost no white space on the calendar—and very little open space left in her life.
Looking at it, I found myself thinking about a story I first encountered many years ago from the poet David Whyte, in his book Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity.
One morning he was moving quickly through his workplace, caught up in everything that needed doing. Passing a room where his colleagues were gathering for a meeting, he stuck his head through the doorway and urgently asked:
“Has anyone seen David?”
There was silence.
Then everyone laughed.
David Whyte was the only David who worked there.
It took him a moment to understand what he had said.
What sounded like an accidental question became an unexpected moment of recognition.
It was exactly the question he needed to be asking.
Where was David?
Somewhere amid the speed, pressure, responsibilities and constant doing of his life, he had become increasingly distant from himself.
He had become very good at doing what needed to be done.
But the person doing all of it had somehow become harder to find.
I have always loved that story.
Perhaps because I know something about it.
There was a period in my own life when I became caught in that same kind of intensity—the whirlwind of the next responsibility, the next person who needed something, the next task, the next to-do.
We can push ourselves to a phenomenal degree, particularly when what we are striving toward has been culturally defined as important.
Until we can’t.
And I was getting sick.
After seeing a number of health-care providers, I happened upon a specialist. Although he carried a physician’s title, what I remember most is that he was also a wonderful therapist.
He asked me one deceptively simple question:
“Tell me what has happened in this last year.”
And out it came.
A nonstop litany that, looking back, resembled that overfull calendar—one thing after another, with almost no open space to breathe, to think, or even to notice how I was actually living.
More importantly, there had been very little space to ask:
How do I want to feel while I am living my life?
He helped me slow down enough to hear myself again.
Gradually, the question changed.
It was no longer only:
What do I need to do?
Another question began to emerge:
Who do I want to be in this life?
And perhaps equally important:
How do I want to feel while I am living it?
Those are very different questions.
Most of us are taught remarkably early how to answer the first one.
What needs to be done?
Finish the assignment.
Get the degree.
Raise the children.
Build the practice.
Answer the email.
Make the appointment.
Take care of the house.
Help the person who needs help.
Go to the meeting.
Do the next thing.
And there is nothing inherently wrong with any of it.
Much of it matters enormously.
The difficulty comes when to do quietly becomes more important than to be.
Busyness can acquire a kind of authority of its own.
A full calendar can look like a meaningful life.
Being needed can feel like being alive.
Productivity can masquerade as purpose.
And because so many of the things we are doing may be worthwhile, we may not notice what is disappearing.
We don’t necessarily lose ourselves by doing things we dislike.
Sometimes we lose ourselves in things we love.
In people we care about.
In professions that once felt like callings.
In responsibilities we willingly accepted.
In being competent.
In being useful.
In being the one who can handle it.
And then perhaps one day—metaphorically or literally—we find ourselves standing in a doorway asking:
Has anyone seen me?
David Whyte did begin to change his life. He started conversations at work and gradually reshaped his role to make more room for teaching, speaking and poetry. He began taking small daily steps toward the life that seemed to be asking something different of him.
What stays with me, though, is that before he changed anything, he heard the question.
Years ago, I encountered another way of approaching that question through the work of psychologist Maria Nemeth, author of The Energy of Money.
Despite its title, I never experienced that work as being simply about money. Money was one expression of energy—something we exchange, direct and use in creating a life.
In a training based on her coaching model, there was a question we were encouraged to consider:
Who am I willing to be in order to create a meaningful outcome?
It might apply to a day.
A week.
A difficult conversation.
A piece of work.
A relationship.
A life.
What caught my attention was the shift in emphasis.
Not simply:
What am I going to do?
But:
Who am I willing to be while I do it?
Nemeth spoke about Qualities of Being.
For me, that idea has stayed.
What qualities do I want to inhabit?
Grace.
Joy.
Curiosity.
Presence.
Compassion.
Courage.
Ease.
Wonder.
Perhaps even play.
The question doesn’t necessarily tell us to abandon what we are doing.
Sometimes nothing outwardly needs to change.
We may still go to the meeting.
Care for someone we love.
Finish the work.
Keep the appointment.
Pay the bills.
Do the laundry.
But perhaps we inhabit those same acts differently.
And sometimes something does need to change.
We rest.
We wander.
We sit beside someone we love.
We contemplate.
We leave an afternoon open.
We say no.
We make something.
We notice what has been missing.
That is why I don’t think this question belongs only to people in demanding careers.
We can enter the do cycle at almost any age or stage of life.
There is always another thing that could be accomplished, repaired, organized, answered, improved, scheduled or checked off.
The list is infinitely renewable.
A life is not.
Perhaps the danger is not busyness itself.
Perhaps it is forgetting that the busyness belongs inside a larger story.
The problem isn’t that there are things to do.
It is that sometimes, somewhere in the doing, we lose the larger plot.
The other day my daughter put on a blouse that I thought was cute, and I told her so. Not long afterward, she appeared wearing something else and handed me the shirt.
“Why did you change?” I asked.
She answered matter-of-factly:
“I decided it didn’t spark joy anymore.”
I loved that answer.
Not because every part of a meaningful life needs to spark joy. Some things we value deeply are difficult, demanding, even painful.
What I loved was that she noticed.
She paused long enough to register her own experience—and allowed what she noticed to matter.
Maybe that is part of the larger question.
Not merely:
What needs to be done?
But perhaps:
Who am I willing to Be while I am living this life?
What qualities of being do I want to bring with me?
And every once in a while, perhaps it is worth looking up from the calendar, the responsibilities, the roles and the lists long enough to hear an even simpler question.
Not as another task.
Not as another self-improvement project.
Just as something to sit beside for a while.
How do I feel in the life I am living?
Sources mentioned: David Whyte, Crossing the Unknown Sea: Work as a Pilgrimage of Identity; Maria Nemeth, PhD, The Energy of Money.
And perhaps a little music for the wandering…