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“If you don’t have time for important things, stop doing things that don’t matter.” Courtney Carver.
This column is dedicated to the busy people and those of us who might consider ourselves as such.
We’ve all been through this. Most of us are probably there right now.
As far as there is much to do, we are members of two different factions in the club.
The first: people who are really too busy.
I feel for us. We’re overwhelmed and crawling because damn it, we have to! We may have several jobs, not because we enjoy it, but because how else should the mortgage and new car payments be paid?
Then there are the children. You need to study diligently at a young age, so they become private oboe lessons (it is important to learn individual strengths and skills.)
And that is just the beginning. We haven’t slept more than five or six hours a night in the last 10 years, because when else is the laundry done? And the day before the housekeeper comes, the house is cleaned. Exhausting.
Employed is a full-time job; Hell, it’s a full time life. The days go by without our noticing because everything has become a buzz. It is the business of busyness, and many of us are like blind mice walking on that pre-verbal wheel forever.
If only we could find a way to dismount and stop running on the spot!
Be careful what you might ask for. Because then we could find ourselves as members of the second group: people who just think they are too busy.
It’s hard to tell those of us in the first group (too busy) from those of us in the second group (too busy). No group took advantage of calm or serenity. When you are so busy that you cannot think clearly enough to know if you are actually busy or just hallucinating the state, how could you?
Both bring neither balance nor harmony into our life, yet we continue to live it, day after day, week after week, year after year. Walk on that damn bike and get nowhere.
The only benefit of the illusion of being busy, as opposed to being really busy, is that the illusion gives you more time to complain to others about how busy you are.
In many circles this is referred to as a status symbol. The busier you are, the more status you earn. I am proud to announce that I was once a multi-millionaire professional. My monthly calendar was so full of meetings, activities, commitments, and committees that I had to highlight it in color with a rainbow of highlighters. Yeah i was so cool
Those were the days.
I guess I’m not as busy now as I was then. (Please don’t tell anyone. I don’t want to lose rank or reputation among my busy friends.) In fact, I make a point of meditating every day, which is the opposite of busy, if there ever was one.
One of my favorite guided meditations includes the following statement, “I am content with doing nothing.” This is not a joke.
When I first heard it, I stopped. We have reached the point in our busy, busy lives where we need to consciously tell ourselves that it is okay not to be busy, to do nothing, to be in the moment and to be okay with it.
Meditation is about calming the mind. It directs the spotlight out of the hustle and bustle and into inner calm. It’s breathing and focusing and finding inner calm – all at the same time – which, when you think about it, is actually multitasking. Panting. Consider the enormity of this statement.
I am.
Meditation is the act of getting busy by not being busy, which is a win-win situation if I’ve ever heard one.
You read it here first.
– Pertler is an award-winning syndicated columnist, published playwright, and writer. Don’t miss a piece; Follow the Slices of Life page on Facebook.
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