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Today's
quotation:
Somewhere in the late 20th century we got the idea
that busyness is a virtue.
We decided that the more
activities we can squeeze into our lives, the happier
we'll
be. What ultimately results, though, is physical and
spiritual exhaustion.
We jump from one appointment to
another, our body and mind racing.
We schedule events back
to back and overlapping, with no time to rest
or reflect.
And when we're in one activity, we're either distracted with the
thing we've just done or the thing that's coming up. It's
not a good way to live.
Jack Zavada
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Today's
Meditation:
I like being busy, much of the time. When I'm
busy, I feel productive, time flows very smoothly, and I
don't have a chance to waste time doing silly things,
which I sometimes do. But I like being busy only
sometimes, not all the time, and in our society today we
seem to value being busy ALL the time, no matter which
other aspects of our lives suffer because of it. We
don't give ourselves a chance to slow down and reflect
because we don't have time for it, and that's a dangerous
route to walk.
There have been times when I've been exceedingly busy--
during the Gulf War when I was in the Army, and teaching
high school and coaching three sports, for
example. During the war, I had no choice-- we did
twelve-hour shifts six days a week, and there was no
choice about it. And I can guarantee you that almost
nothing else in my life was addressed during those
months. When I taught high school, I was busy on purpose,
because I wanted to contribute-- but I also knew that down
time would be coming soon in the form of a break or
vacation.
I think that the most important thing to keep in mind
about being too busy is that it's almost always OUR
choice. We can blame it on the job, but if the job
is affecting other aspects of our lives, perhaps it's time
to revisit our contract or look for new work. We can
blame it on family, but I know many families in which the
kids participate in three or four activities each, and
need to be shuttled constantly from place to place,
leaving both the parents and the kids exhausted. We can schedule down time with our families,
and cut out many of the obligations and responsibilities,
and everyone would actually benefit from us doing so.
I believe that busyness is in many ways a form of
delusion: the busier we are, the more we think we're getting
done. In fact, the people who have balance between
busyness and time for relaxing and reflecting are the ones
who get things done well, with enduring results, rather
than running around doing less-than-stellar work because
there just isn't time.
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