“Busyness is the greatest distraction from living, as we coast through our lives day after day, showing up for our obligations but mostly being absent from ourselves, mistaking the doing for being.” ~ Maria Popova
During the first lockdown last spring I found myself moving between what I would describe as intense restlessness and lots of doing alongside a grateful (albeit sometimes reluctant) awareness of being. Time suddenly appeared more on my side than ever before. There was no travel time anywhere, my husband also began working from home and helped more often with weekday meals, I didn’t have lunches to make, appointments to meet or yoga classes to lead. There were no pick-ups or drop-offs for my daughter, nor were there weekends away, dinner parties, lunch dates or lots of extra kids at my house crafting, eating and making their presence known by the joy and mess they left behind.
Still there were many days, especially at the beginning, that were a blur. I wasn’t present for all of the moments that added up to each day because I was ‘busy’. A new schedule emerged that in many ways mirrored the previous version; I maintained ‘busy’ but presence and leisure time were still an unobtainable luxury.
With the second lockdown, this has settled upon me. Again. I really thought I had a better handle on my busyness with the last round of pandemic lockdown training.
How does the pandemic or life in general allow you to reflect upon using ‘busy’ as: 1) a badge of honour, 2) an excuse, 3) a way to hide.
Busy as a Badge of Honour
Does busy for you mean that saying no is a missed opportunity for accomplishment instead of a chance to create a healthy life balance? Does staying busy create forgetfulness that at best is inconvenient for maintaining a highly scheduled life and at worst is hurtful to those around you when you fail to show up for them? Are you proud of being busy even amidst the fallout of having not a minute to spare? Do you ask the question, “Are you busy?” as words that could be replaced for, “Are things going well?” Do you feel successful when you juggle more things than most or when an additional impossible ‘yes’ becomes a checkmark on your to-do list? Check-in honestly about your relationship with busy. Is it really serving you and getting you closer to an authentic life? Busy is not a badge of honour. It is a choice with consequences of how much of your life is actually lived as it happens.
Busy as an Excuse for “Why Not”
If you are too busy you sometimes don’t have time to write the letter, to support the cause, to call the friend who talks for hours, to figure out the plumbing issue, the relationship issue, to finish the novel, to clean out the junk drawer, to determine what you could beneficially contribute to the lives of others. ‘Too busy’ defers action to another time but it often also distorts the hierarchy of your core values. What is really important to you? What are you missing when you keep your schedule and your mind cluttered? Is it a valid reason to not pay attention to your life? Wouldn’t you be more compelled to act if you were acutely aware of your own loneliness, your poor filing system, your leaky roof that needed to be replaced five years ago, or of your consistent sources of joy and fulfillment? If you aren’t spending much time in the present moment there will always be plenty of reasons for why not to act because after all you have too much to do to spend any time being who you are.
Busy as a Way to Hide From Connection
How do you hide? Do you overeat, disappear into your screen, gossip, gamble, clean, worry, complain, obsess over your health/the past/the future, excessively plan/exercise/drink, or do you use work commitments to keep yourself from yourself and those you share your life with?
What if your brand of busy is full of virtuous endeavours? What if you have no time to ‘be’ because of all your helpful ‘doing’? Does a lack of connection matter when you dedicate your life to helping others?
Who does it hurt when you choose to use distraction to avoid being with whatever ‘is’ in your life?
Having a positive impact on the world around you is important. Of course it is. And yet…Numbing out, regardless of how you do it, is cheating yourself (and others) from your life truly lived. When hiding deprives you of connection with who you are and with those around you, aren’t you a shadow of who you could be? Aren’t you a flicker of light in the world when you could be the sun?
Presence is everything.
