Everywhere I go lately, this is what I hear, “I am so busy.” Underneath this statement seems to linger some veiled expectation on the part of the other that I should understand that because we are so overly occupied as a people that we should therefore be exempt from being responsible for certain things; like taking care of ourselves, like noticing, like making time for others, like living in balance, like paying attention to our kids. Observe this for yourself. How often do you feel, say or hear, “I am too busy to…” (Fill in the blank).
What is happening to us? When did “busy” become the very highest in what to go for in this Life? Even though most people would chuckle and say that is not what they actually think, not what they actually believe, it is actually how we are living.
In the yogic tradition there are two aspects of the Universe; that which is still and steady, and that which is flowing and moving. These energies move through us and through all of Creation. Unfortunately, we are too often weighted in movement that is extreme, chaotic, tense and blind. And too often, the stillness that we inhabit comes in the form of collapse and zoning out. At its best stillness informs movement and flow originates out of the steadiness. They contain one other. They seek one other. That is why these energies are depicted as Shakti and Shiva; the goddess and the god, the pairs of opposites, longing for the embrace of Union.
We have lost track of the necessity in our lives for balance. And we do this at great cost to what we love most. I will tell you that the very best and most important things that have ever happened to me have been born out of the space and the room for what really matters. No easy feat in a world that values speed and busyness and doing way too much. All the time. Even in our leisure pursuits.
On some level we know this, and yet too often it does not change our behavior. Change requires more than words or guilt or empty promises. It demands understanding what your actions mean to you. Why it is that you do what you do. So, what does being busy mean to you? What do you think it means about you? Why do you do it?
P.S. Change also requires including into the equation what it is that you lose out on when you do what you always do. In other words, at the very end of all of this busyness, beyond the reasons we tell ourselves for why we do what we do, what will you have lost that you cannot get back? Looked at in this light, what do you suppose our eulogies or tomb stones would read like? “Here lies so and so. Too busy to…”