Hi it’s Dave,
Greetings
from Ilfracombe and welcome to Under
Blue Skies. I am very excited with
how everything is progressing. I find that sharing these pages with everyone
goes a long way towards helping me to keep writing them.
Today’s
piece is a repost from a blog page that I stumbled upon a few weeks ago. I decided that since the theme of this post
follows my own thinking and has a lot in common with my own life and thoughts
that it was worth a share with my readers.
So here we have the thoughts of Omid SAfi on
The Disease of Being Busy
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| Photo by: wytchwynd photography |
I saw a dear friend a few days ago. I stopped by to ask
her how she was doing, how her family was. She looked up, voice lowered, and
just whimpered: “I’m so busy… I am so busy… have so much going on.”
Almost immediately after, I ran into another friend and
asked him how he was. Again, same tone, same response: “I’m just so busy… got
so much to do.”
The tone was exacerbated, tired, even overwhelmed.
And it’s not just adults. When we moved to North Carolina about ten
years ago, we were thrilled to be moving to a city with a great school system.
We found a diverse neighbourhood, filled with families. Everything felt good,
felt right.
After we settled in, we went to one of the friendly
neighbours, asking if their daughter and our daughter could get together and
play. The mother, a really lovely person, reached for her phone and pulled out
the calendar function. She scrolled… and scrolled… and scrolled. She finally
said: “She has a 45-minute opening two and half weeks from now. The rest of the
time it’s gymnastics, piano, and voice lessons. She’s just…. so busy.”
Horribly destructive habits start early, really early.
How did we end up living like this? Why do we do this to
ourselves? Why do we do this to our children? When did we forget that we are
human beings, not human doings?
Whatever happened to a world in which kids get muddy, get
dirty, get messy, and heavens, get bored? Do we have to love our children so
much that we over schedule them, making them stressed and busy — just like us?
What happened to a world in which we can sit with the
people we love so much and have slow conversations about the state of our heart
and soul, conversations that slowly unfold, conversations with pregnant pauses
and silences that we are in no rush to fill?
How did we create a world in which we have more and more
and more to do with less time for leisure, less time for reflection, less time
for community, less time to just… be?
Somewhere we read, “The
unexamined life is not worth living… for a human.” How are we supposed to live,
to examine, to be, to become, to be fully human when we are so busy?
This disease of being “busy” (and let’s call it what it
is, the dis-ease of being busy, when we are never at ease) is spiritually
destructive to our health and wellbeing. It saps our ability to be fully
present with those we love the most in our families, and keeps us from forming
the kind of community that we all so desperately crave.
Since the 1950s, we have had so many new technological
innovations that we thought (or were promised) would make our lives easier,
faster, simpler. Yet, we have no more “free” or leisurely time today than we
did decades ago.
For some of us, the “privileged” ones, the lines between
work and home have become blurred. We are on our devices. All The Time.
Smart phones and laptops mean that there is no division
between the office and home. When the kids are in bed, we are back online.
One of my own daily struggles is the avalanche of email.
I often refer to it as my jihad against email. I am constantly buried under
hundreds and hundreds of emails, and I have absolutely no idea how to make it
stop. I’ve tried different techniques: only responding in the evenings, not
responding over weekends, asking people to schedule more face-to-face time.
They keep on coming, in volumes that are unfathomable: personal emails,
business emails, hybrid emails. And people expect a response — right now. I,
too, it turns out… am so busy.
The reality looks very different for others. For many,
working two jobs in low-paying sectors is the only way to keep the family
afloat. Twenty percent of our children are living in poverty, and too many of
our parents are working minimum wage jobs just to put a roof over their head
and something resembling food on the table. We are so busy.
The old models, including that of a nuclear family with
one parent working outside the home (if it ever existed), have passed away for
most of us. We now have a majority of families being single families, or where
both parents are working outside the home. It is not working.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
In many Muslim cultures, when you want to ask them how
they’re doing, you ask: in Arabic, Kayf haal-ik? or,
in Persian, Haal-e shomaa chetoreh? How is your haal?
What is this haal that
you inquire about? It is the transient state of one’s heart. In reality, we
ask, “How is your heart doing at this very moment, at this breath?” When I ask,
“How are you?” that is really what I want to know.
I am not asking how many items are on your to-do list,
nor asking how many items are in your inbox. I want to know how your heart is
doing, at this very moment. Tell me. Tell me your heart is joyous, tell me your
heart is aching, tell me your heart is sad, tell me your heart craves a human
touch. Examine your own heart, explore your soul, and then tell me something
about your heart and your soul.
Tell me you remember you are still a human being, not
just a human doing. Tell me you’re more than just a machine, checking off items
from your to-do list. Have that conversation, that glance, that touch. Be a
healing conversation, one filled with grace and presence.
Put your hand on my arm, look me in the eye, and connect
with me for one second. Tell me something about your heart, and awaken my
heart. Help me remember that I too am a full and complete human being, a human
being who also craves a human touch.
I teach at a university where many students pride
themselves on the “study hard, party hard” lifestyle. This might be a
reflection of many of our lifestyles and our busy-ness — that even our means of
relaxation is itself a reflection of that same world of overstimulation. Our
relaxation often takes the form of action-filled (yet mindless) films, or
violent and face-paced sports.
I don’t have any magical solutions. All I know is that we
are losing the ability to live a truly human life.
We need a different relationship to work, to technology.
We know what we want: a meaningful life, a sense of community, a balanced
existence. It’s not just about “leaning in” or faster iPhones. We want to be
truly human.
W. B. Yeats once wrote:
“It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own
soul than it does for a soldier to fight on a battlefield.”
How exactly are we supposed to examine the dark corners
of our soul when we are so busy? How are we supposed to live the examined life?
I am always a prisoner of hope, but I wonder if we are
willing to have the structural conversation necessary about how to do that, how
to live like that. Somehow we need a different model of organizing our lives,
our societies, our families, our communities.
I want my kids to be dirty, messy, even bored — learning
to become human. I want us to have a kind of existence where we can pause, look
each other in the eye, touch one another, and inquire together: Here is how my
heart is doing? I am taking the time to reflect on my own existence; I am in
touch enough with my own heart and soul to know how I fare, and I know how to
express the state of my heart.
How is the state of your heart today?
Let us insist on a type of human-to-human connection
where when one of us responds by saying, “I am just so busy,” we can follow up
by saying, “I know, love. We all are. But I want to know how your heart is
doing.”
ooo000ooo
So as we reach the end of this week’s post I would like to thank you
sincerely for taking the time to read the words. I hope that you will find them useful as you
move forwards in your daily life.
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read or found it useful
ooo000ooo
About Dave I am a coach; speaker; radio presenter and founder of The Blue Sky Company. I am
also a therapist and co-own a virtual light centre called The Crystal Spring. My
therapy work includes music therapy; crystal therapy and I am currently
studying a course on Colour Therapy.
If you would like to ask any questions about the blog, my therapy work etc,
then please feel free to email me at:- underblueskies@europe.com
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The Fearless Life Guide is a new book written by teacher and practitioner M. J Robertson. It is
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And whilst on the subject of books, sbown below is the cover image plus a link to my first book of
inspirational phrases “Inspirations”
Have a fantastic day, live a life of Passion and Power.
And above all
Don't Predict The
Future - CREATE IT!
DAve x
