Dr. John A. King reflects on the difference between doing and being, describing his effort to reconnect with family and understand what it means to be a Wurundjeri man. He uses travel metaphors—a faulty fuel gauge, driving by instinct rather than plan—to explore how true being might lead to purposeful doing within community, not the other way around.
Sky's dark. It's, uh, raining up ahead, which is going to make it a bit wet tonight. So yeah, so I thought I'd give myself a treat, stop in at Harry's Fine Made Food. They do crocodile, kangaroo, camel, all sorts of stuff. So I might get me a camel burger. I've never had a camel burger. Could be fun. I had something here the other day, I think it was a I forget what it was, but it's too bloody long ago. Or I might get an egg and bacon roll, who knows. So I've been wrestling with this whole like next phase and stuff like that, and you know, because I'm, you know, I'm wired to do, you know, I think, I think we're all wired to do, all men are wired to do, get involved, work, engage. And, um, I think, I think that can become a preoccupation with— bloody big truck— then it can become a preoccupation with what am I here to do, and it's really It's who am I here to be? And that's where the journey started. It started miraculously. It started with, um, with wanting to connect with family and just be that and discover who that be is, you know, what it is to be as opposed to doing. And so that's what I'm going back to focus on this time, culture and country. And, uh, you know, what, what does it mean to be a Wurundjeri man? Jungaray. Because I think they're things that you can't, you can't teach, you can't, you can't. And when I say teach, there's things I can't go and teach that to myself, read that. It's, you've got to adapt that by being. And maybe out of the being flows the doing. Maybe out of the being comes a place where within the place and the community I can find my place to serve and to do. So that's just where I've come to. And I don't know. It's just a bit of a bloody adventure, and I think some days that just gets you uncomfortable. Like I don't have a destination. I don't have a point I'm going to. That's what I'm wrestling with. Maybe that point is the being. It's the person I'm becoming, the man I'm becoming. Bloody hell. It's a fuel indicator, not a fuel gauge, because it's telling me I'm going to get 860 kilometers out of this car, and there's just no bloody way. What it'll do, it'll sit there for around, um, 350 kilometers and then just go to like a quarter full, a third full. So I've really got no idea. I, um, I drive not according to my gauge but according to my bladder. And, uh, we've got a ways to go.
