Something to think about in 2015

courtesy of http://www.imdb.com

I've been congratulating myself this New Year's Eve for being on top of things: finances under control, household chores all caught up, preparation for my meditation group in place for this Saturday, etc. And now that the holiday season is coming to a close, I'm looking forward to turning my full attention to my work as a free lance writer. That includes maintaining Katalusis, which I've been neglecting lately.

As my own boss, I get to set my pace and granted, my severe arthritis slows me down quite a bit. But you'll seldom hear me complain about how busy I am. Most always, I can take time to pause and visit with a friend or neighbor when the occasion arises. And I'm known to hang out now and then at a favorite coffee shop where, as in the Cheers TV series, everyone knows my name. At least the staff there knows my name, and I know their names, too.

I'm in sync with the Rev. Beth Merrill Neel's post today titled Busy, or Full over at the Christian Science Monitor. It's definitely something to think about as we ring in 2015. Neel writes:

When someone inquires how I am, I often reply, “Good. Life is full.” I say that intentionally because I have grown weary of the excuse of being too busy. There’s an implication that in my busyness I have shut out people I love. My mom will call in the middle of the week and say, “Oh, honey, I just hate to bother you; I know how busy you are.” Even harder is when parishioners say, “Oh, I know you’re so busy, I didn’t want to add one more thing to your plate.”

So I’m working on the discipline of considering my life full rather than considering myself busy. To say that life is full is to acknowledge abundance—an abundance of opportunities to engage in work that I find meaningful and interesting; an abundance of ways for my child to discover the world with friends and to energize body, heart, and soul; an abundance of riches because we have a home and friends and family and neighbors and community.

To say that I am busy puts the focus on just me. I am busy with administrivia and details because no one else can pay attention to them quite the way I can (which is untrue). To say that I am busy makes me feel worthy, because busy people must be important people must be powerful people, right? To say that I am busy implies that every moment is crammed with doing things that must matter a great deal, because why would I cram one more thing into my life if it weren’t deeply important?

I am not busy; my life is full, and I carry with me that beautiful image in Psalm 23: “thou anointest my head with oil; my cup runneth over.”

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Beth Merrill Neel

Beth Merrill Neel is a Presbyterian pastor. She blogs at Hold Fast to What is Good, part of the CCblogs network.

Too busy for friendship?

Friendship.  Photo credit: Virginia Bergman.

Saturday morning at Cups ‘N’ Scoops, a local coffee shop, I enjoyed spending an hour or two visiting with friends Julie and Dee with whom I feel connected at a deeply spiritual level. Our get together was a powerful reminder that friendship is not just an option in how we choose to spend our time; it’s essential to our health and well being - regardless of our circumstances.

Currently focused on revising a book-length manuscript, I value my hours of solitude, but like writer Tim Kreider, the author of an astute contribution to the NY Times series on anxiety, I intentionally plan my daily schedule to avoid “The Busy Trap.” As a result, I seldom need to rush in order to include time for exercise, reading, meditation, writing, and staying in touch with family and friends.

The 1950s theory of Type A and Type B personalities has since been discredited; however,  attributes customarily assigned to Type A, especially the chronic busyness, might well describe the dominant trend in our present day culture depicted by Kreider:

If you live in America in the 21st century you’ve probably had to listen to a lot of people tell you how busy they are. It’s become the default response when you ask anyone how they’re doing: “Busy!” “So busy.” “Crazy busy.” It is, pretty obviously, a boast disguised as a complaint. And the stock response is a kind of congratulation: “That’s a good problem to have,” or “Better than the opposite.”

Notice it isn’t generally people pulling back-to-back shifts in the I.C.U. or commuting by bus to three minimum-wage jobs  who tell you how busy they are; what those people are is not busy but tired. Exhausted. Dead on their feet. It’s almost always people whose lamented busyness is purely self-imposed: work and obligations they’ve taken on voluntarily, classes and activities they’ve “encouraged” their kids to participate in. They’re busy because of their own ambition or drive or anxiety, because they’re addicted to busyness and dread what they might have to face in its absence.

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