How to Be Here: A Guide to Creating a Life Worth Living

by Rob Bell

It may have been done or said by someone else. That’s a distinct possibility. It may have been done or said before. But it hasn’t been done or said by you. It hasn’t come through your unique flesh and blood, through your life, through your experience and insight and perspective.

First, we throw ourselves into it. And then, at the same time, we surrender the outcomes. We surrender the outcomes because we cannot control how people are going to respond to us and our work in the world. They may love it, or they may hate it, or they may not react to it at all. They may love us, or they may hate us, or they may not even notice us.

You cannot control how people are going to respond to you and your work in the world.

Have you ever heard someone on a stage or in the office or the classroom doing the work, but he’s simultaneously searching for someone to tell him how good, accomplished, skillful, or excellent he is? It’s as if he’s searching for applause in order to keep going. You can sometimes see it in their eyes, this deeply unfulfilled sense that they are incomplete, that they need the strokes and affirmation of others to be content.

If you are looking for a particular response to bring you joy, that response may never come. The joy comes from being fully present in this moment. The reward is in throwing yourself into it right here and now.

Are there any small things that you have been skipping over, skimping on, sliding across the surface of—so it’s time to treat them like they’re big things, throwing yourself into them?

But other times the reason we don’t feel fully here is rooted in how we’re thinking about where we are. After three minutes in that rental car office, I noticed how fully present that woman behind the counter was. It was that noticeable. And then I started talking to her and she said, This is where I start.

If you feel stuck in your life, like it’s passing you by, like there’s something way better for you somewhere out there and you’re missing it, try this—try throwing yourself into the small things and repeating to yourself: This is where I start.

Where you sit, the tools you use, the physical environment you inhabit, the rhythm of your day and week, the rituals that remind you who you are and what you’re doing here— these details are important because how you do anything is how you do everything.

When you intentionally slow down, you instantly see how fast you’ve been moving the rest of the time. When you stop to pay attention, you learn how much you’ve been missing.

Where did all that anger come from? It built up from days and days of moving too quickly, absorbing all the pain and anguish the world throws at us that we don’t have time in the moment to think about and work through. It accumulates in our hearts, our cells, our psyches,

You’re not that angry about the drawer in the kitchen. The drawer simply gave you an outlet for all the grief and pain sitting right below the surface of your life. Sabbath forces you to listen to your life. Sabbath is a day when you are fully present to your pain, your stress, your worry, your fear. Sabbath is when you let whatever you’ve pushed down rise to the surface. Sabbath is a day when things that are broken get fixed, when things within you that have torn are mended.

Central to creating a life worth living is understanding that you have more power over your time than you realize.

You create the rhythm that helps you do the work that you’re here to do.

You and I were raised in a modern world that taught us how to work hard and be productive and show up on time and give it our best. We learned at an early age that our grades in high school mattered because that was what colleges look at, and our work in college mattered because that’s how we were going to get good jobs, and how hard we worked at those first jobs determined how fast we would climb the ladder and get ahead in our careers. And so, for many of us, that’s what we did. We put in the hours and saved our money and stayed late at the office because that’s what one did to be successful. But all that left us missing something. We were stressed. Distracted. Busy. Feeling like life was passing us by. We had a full schedule, but not a full heart.

Whatever it is that you find yourself in the midst of on any given day—from laundry and meetings and traffic to going to class and answering emails and driving kids around—I want you to learn to live like you’re not missing a thing, like your eyes are wide open, fully awake to the miraculous nature of your own existence.

want you to be here. I want you to see and feel and notice and even enjoy your life, not just as you sit quietly, but as you go, as you work, as you answer email, as you are stuck in traffic, as you find your path and throw yourself into it, surrendering the outcomes as you risk and learn and grow and work your craft, in the push and pull and stress and pain and sorrow and responsibility and slog of this sacred gift that is your life.

You doing a few things well is a thousand times better than you doing lots and lots of things with half a heart because you’re rushing from thing to thing.