It’s a conversation I’ve heard time and time before. Just yesterday I overheard one woman ask her friend, “How are you?” To which her friend replied, “I’m good” and, wait for it . . . “SO busy!”
I recently came across an article by essayist and cartoonist Tim Kreider. He wrote a piece for The New York Times titled, “The ‘Busy’ Trap.” It is an insightful piece on how we use busyness as a form of self-worth. We check our calendar like we check our pulse. If our calendar affirms our busyness, our blood is still pumping and we are still living.
But are we living life to the fullest?
In our busyness do we actually leave room for leisure, or is that scheduled for an after-dinner pedicure at your local salon while you check all your notifications?
I was struck by four points in Kreider’s piece in the Times:
We’re addicted to busyness.
Kreider makes the keen observation that those who work long hours overtime trying to make ends meet consider themselves tired as opposed to busy. Busyness is rather something that many people with time intentionally seek out. They may not sign themselves up to be busy merely for the title, but because it’s second nature:
“It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed . . . They’re busy because of their own ambition or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence.”
Too often when we (and I do include myself) have open space in our calendars, we feel a societal pressure to fill it with something.
The “latchkey” generation has been lost.
Long gone seem the days that kids played outside for hours.
Kreider remembers, “I was a member of the latchkey generation and had three hours of totally unstructured, largely unsupervised time every afternoon.”
What would we do with three hours of unstructured time?
When I have three hours, I find myself experiencing a self-imposed obligation for productivity. How many appointments can I schedule, how many errands could be run, or how many words could be written?
What would happen if I started the day with no plan at all? In some ways, it scares me. Heaven forbid, would I find myself bored? But maybe this is just what the body, mind, and soul need. In these words attributed to Albert Einstein, “The monotony and solitude of a quiet life stimulates the creative mind.”
We need space to breathe to feed our imagination. We emphasize the importance of free play for our children, but do we allow ourselves the same privilege?
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Busyness wards off emptiness.
Kreider points out that, “Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day.”
These words hit me deep and stared me right in the face.
As a stay-at-home mom, having a full schedule gives me a false sense of security. It makes me feel like I have my kids involved in all the right things, whether it be a library story time or a playdate with friends. Both things are good, just need to be rightly prioritized in order to give both me and my children time in our day to simply be. Perhaps even to “stimulate our creative minds.”
(Leisure) is indispensable.
Kreider explains: “Idleness is not just a vacation, an indulgence or a vice; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer a mental affliction as disfiguring as rickets.”
Here, I think Kreider is mistaking the word “idleness” for “leisure.” I think his point harkens back to the words of Albert Einstein, that quiet moments point us to true awe and wonder.
Josef Pieper, author of Leisure: The Basis of Culture, writes that idleness is actually a “deep-seated lack of calm which makes leisure impossible”—for example, scrolling mindlessly through your phone. On the other hand, Pieper describes leisure as “like a man falling asleep, for one can only fall asleep by ‘letting oneself go.’ When we really let our minds rest contemplatively on a rose in bud, on a child at play, on a divine mystery, we are rested and quickened as though by a dreamless sleep.”
If we want to truly experience beauty and have fully human lives, then leisure is indispensable.
While there is much goodness to be gleaned from “The ‘Busy’ Trap,” I do see a few flaws in Kreider’s logic. For example, it’s not possible for everyone to spontaneously meet a friend for drinks. Nor is it possible to just go outside and play whenever the wind stirs up the desire. Discipline and responsibility are also essential. But I appreciate his observations on how we use busyness as a measure of our purpose and worth.
Instead of allowing our to-do lists and calendar items to speak to us of our meaning, what if we slowed down enough to contemplate a rose in bud, and in doing so, received the truth that we were born into a beautiful world and must then be loved enough to be placed here to appreciate it.
Susanna Parent is a regular contributor to the BIS blog, speaker and a freelance writer. While a Wisconsin native, she now begins her mornings brewing French press coffee in the home she shares with her husband and children in the Twin Cities. When the sun sets, you’ll find her with friends enjoying a glass of red wine, preferably outside underneath twinkly lights. When not exploring all that the Twin Cities has to offer, she is indulging her wanderlust spirit by brainstorming their family's next new adventure. You can find out more about her here. Read all of Susanna's posts here.
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