BECOMING UN-BUSY - PART 1

I discovered this title from a Facebook page by the same name and I find the quotes they share to be particularly powerful. Like this one.

For four years I had four kids living in my house, in three different schools. I was teaching full-time, and running a guest house.  Futhermore, because we live in the countryside we have to drive 30-45 minutes to get pretty much anywhere. So I know a bit about being busy, but I have very deliberately worked my way out of that.  I am grateful to be in a much quieter season at the moment.

How busy are you?

Firstly recognise that everything that requires effort is work: house work is work; taking care of kids is work; meeting family commitments is work; driving a car is work; service in the church or community can be work.  Your 8 hours at your chosen occupation is just one facet of the work you do.

The sum of all your daily tasks may be taking you over the top.  Studies have shown that in the workplace people are literally getting ill and even dying from stress and busy-ness*.

Being too busy usually results in being too tired which could mean:

•      Being unavailable to others. Are you able to be a good Samaritan – spontaneously? Or are the needs of others just a disturbance in your schedule?

•      Inability to notice beauty. Do you stop and smell the roses, or in my case, appreciate the clouds? Or are you caught in a treadmill of rushing to do, to get to the next thing, without appreciating the moment?

•      A sense of being overwhelmed or continually rushed. Sometimes we can be so caught up in a mindset of busy-ness that it infiltrates even our family time and leisure.  And are you passing that on to your kids?  Our kids lives can be scheduled to the hilt with extra-murals. 

•      Hobbies and social events becomes another ‘to do’. Our hobbies and even church or community service can become quite driven, and can stop being beneficial or fun.  Likewise social engagements and spending time with friends can become just another thing on our to-do list.  Then we tend to cut back on these, and yet they are the very things feeding our souls.  Rather cut back in other areas to allow these to have the impact that they need to have!

•      An inability to do nothing.  Do you need constant activity or constant entertainment? I have often heard people saying, I wouldn’t know what to do with myself if I didn’t work.  That is a not a good thing!  There is so much to enjoy in this world! There is so much outside of an office!

•      Never reflecting deeply on anything.

•      Hardly ever reading for enjoyment.

•      No spiritual life.

Are you too busy? Ask yourself, are the things I am doing or attending, filling my tank or continually emptying it?  Is it filling my child’s tank or empting it?

FREE UP SPACE IN YOUR LIFE

I want to encourage you to free up space in your life.  I truly believe that our lives need time for more silence and solitude as well as inspirational activity to fill us up so that we can give out meaningfully into the world.

Life is here for us to delight in it: to delight in God, in being alive; to delight in creation and being creative.  The opposite of ‘busy-ness’ is not inactivity but peace, harmony, contentment.

Marva Dawn says: “The Hebrew word for peace, shalom, begins in reconciliation with God and continues in reconciliation with our sisters and brothers - even our enemies.  Moreover, shalom designates being at peace with ourselves, health, wealth, fulfilment, satisfaction, contentment, tranquility, and - to sum it all up - wholeness.” (Keeping the Sabbath Wholly)

Does your current lifestyle provide that for you?

MAKE AN INTENTIONAL CHOICE

The first step in embracing a slower pace is to recognise the problem and to make an intentional choice to slow down.

One of the most fundamental things that helps me do this is the concept that:

Think about the people in your life: did you choose them based on what they do or who they are?  If you chose them for what they do or earn, we would call that shallow.   Do you love your children because of what they do or who they are? Likewise you are worthy just as you are!

God’s value of you rests in who you are, irrespective of what you achieve or accomplish.  His interest is in who you are becoming, your character.

VANITY OR VALUE?

Our culture, on the other hand, measures us on productivity and accomplishment. And the standard is often completely unattainable.  More so than ever, our culture projects the idea that we must be PERFECT partners, parents, friends, social activists, employees/employers, and we must have perfect homes and holidays, and our children must do well at school and out of school and then they must go on to study well and get the perfect job, partner, etc.  If we can’t be perfect we must at least market ourselves via social media as appearing to be perfect!  Our culture lives by Vanity not by Value.  So we will need to make an intentional counter-cultural choice to live by value.

Let go of guilt. Living at a slower pace is not being lazy, although it may feel like that at first.  If your life has been run at a furious pace for some time it is going to feel odd to slow down.  But being uncomfortable is not a bad thing.  If you’re serious about change you can allow yourself to feel the discomfort and move beyond it.  It can take a lot of time to unwind.  

You may even get bored, that’s good. That’s when the magic starts to happen…

...Look out for part 2 in Becoming Unbusy.

·       Jeffrey Pfeffer: Dying for a Paycheck: How Modern Management Harms Employee Health and Company Performance—and What We Can Do about It.