Lately I've become increasingly (and painfully) aware of my reputation for busyness. This came to a head yesterday when I offered to catch up with a friend over the weekend, and her response was: "But you're too busy."
My busyness has gotten to such as state that my friends don't even trust my word anymore.
On any given day I find myself beginning conversations with students at breakfast with: "Got a busy day ahead of you?". I always have to "rush off" after scoffing down a hurried lunch, and I have begun a habit of taking early dinner, as I don't have time to attend Formal Hall and coffee in the SCR afterwards. My invariable response to the question of "How are you?" seems to be: "Good, but ... busy!" It's funny tho', I don't think I always mean it when I say it - it just seems to be easiest thing to say. No-one questions you, and most nod their heads respectfully, or click their tongue in sympathy.
Busyness has become a by-word in our society for our self-importance; a badge of a person's success. The more tasks we have to do, the more important/interesting/needed we feel. Our identity is placed in being strong, action-filled people, and we pride ourselves in being able to juggle multiple jobs at the same time. Busyness, I suspect, also means we can hide in our work, and avoid having a real conversation. It's a way of hiding from our fears. By getting caught up in the pressing minutiae, we don't have to lift up our eyes to look at the bigger picture of our lives, and where we're going. But busyness saps our lives of beauty. When was the last time I went for a long walk and looked at a tree? Or spend an afternoon with friends, unfettered by nagging thoughts of unfinished projects, my brain empty of calculations of rescheduling my timetable so that I can squeeze in an extra hour of admin in the evening?
Of course, I'm not decrying work. Work itself isn't bad. In fact, it's very good. There are many valuable things to be done, and idleness is as much a danger as busyness. Sometimes we simply have to work mad hours and numerous jobs - the reality of life is that there are responsibilities, rent that needs to be paid, assignments that need to be turned in, deadlines that need to be met. But work will always want more of us, and when busyness become a habit, and you give the impression of not even having time for friends and family (let alone God!), then you've got to wonder.
Jesus understood this very well. We've been working through the gospel of Mark at Christian Union this semester, and students have picked up on the almost ritualistic regularity of Jesus' departing to a high mountain to pray. There couldn't have been more important or urgent work than the proclaimation that the Kingdom of God had come near, and yet the Son of God took time out to spend with his papa.
So, I'm going to make a conscious effort not to be so busy, and, perhaps more revealingly, not to appear as if I'm too busy.
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The formal rituals of liturgy really help in regulating rest and work. There is the Jewish Sabbath or Shabbat, a day of rest between Sundown Friday and the appearance of three stars in the sky on Saturday night. It's a time of rest, of celebration, of reflection and prayer. (Compline and Evensong, services within the Catholic and Anglican tradition, echo similar concepts in the closing of a day's work with thanksgiving and prayer.)
Shabbat is ushered in with the lighting of candles. Traditionally, the women of the family lead the prayers. Hands are drawn over the twin flames of the candles towards the face, welcoming in the light of the Sabbath day into oneself. (In fact, in one of the songs, Shabbat is conceptualised as a bride or a Queen, to be welcomed into the home). Then the festivities begin, as the family gathers around the table for the evening meal. Prayers and blessings are recited, there is singing, and bread and wine is shared.
Saturday is then spend in enjoyment and play, the contrast being not to engage in activities that are considered to be 'creative', by way of exercising order/control over our environment.
My favourite part of the Shabbat ritual is the Havdalah, the service that marks the end of Sabbath. Again, a braided candle, symbolizing the light of Shabbat, is lit. Wine, as always a symbol of joy, is passed around, so that people can take a final sip of the joy of Shabbat.
As one of the final acts of Shabbat, spices, such as cinnamon and clove, are placed in a box, and passed around, so that everyone might smell the fragrance. The sweet-smelling spices symbolize the sweetness of Shabbat, and the idea is that worshippers breath in sweetness of Shabbat in one last time so that it might sustain them through the week to come until Shabbat can be welcomed once more.
Havdalah is intended to require a person to use all five senses: taste the wine, smell the spices, see the flame of the candle and feel its heat, and hear the blessings. Thus the sounds, tastes and smells of Shabbat brings the holiness (ie., the set-apartness) of Shabbat into the rest of the week.
Whatever you might think about the divide between the sacred and the ordinary, or the role of ritual and liturgy in daily life (and I'm certainly not into forbidding certain tasks and abiding by strict laws on the Sabbath), the sentiment deserves consideration. This is one of the occasions I find myself deeply grateful for our physicality. Time and meaning are marked through our bodily senses. God dignifies and enriches our mundane, transitory doings with glimpses of eternity, as we echo his pattern of work and rest in creation with our own.
Aha! You then asked me when we could catch up, and I said my brother was here Saturday (you were most welcome to join in, but practicing French was rather out as he would feel excluded), how about Sunday, and guess what? You were busy. Nor did you get back to me about times I could visit in the afternoon, presumably because you were ...busy. So I don't think I am far wrong in saying you generally are such.
ReplyDeletePersonally the idea of business seems to tie into the idea of idlesness being a state of moral decrepitude, an outward sign of the inner corruption. Decadence. If you aren't busy, you are not working, and people who don't want to work are lazy and bad. See certain views about Indigenous people, or those who are on the dole. That would be a certain puritan work ethic coming through, and being picked up by individuals as a means of hiding from bigger problems in their lives or their boredom. I was reading something rather interesting about concepts of time pre British invasion, and the idea of 'work' being alien because life was not about survival, but just living and enjoyment. It tied rather well into this drive for THINGS that so many have, the need to own and to accumulate and to be on time and move forward. Also reinforced just how alien it is to think that doing nothing is not actually bad for you, or reflecting your own character.
Or stuff.
LOL, enname, where would I be without you? Intellectually flaccid, stranded on some over-sentimentalised, over-idealised beach bearing no resemblance to reality, that's where.
ReplyDeleteI wasn't actually busy ... I am just bad at communicating, and lazy. Viz. I had time in the afternoon, but neglected to call. Neglected to call, because your coming over would have involved my cleaning my flat(see the laziness coming in?), so that you'd have somewhere to sit, other than on the floor.
Yes, I agree with most of what you're saying, tho' you'll need to expand on the pre-Brit invasion stuff. Isn't life, at its very basic level, going to be always about survival, whatever historical age?
There's something to be said about the concept of homo faber - man being creative, and man making order/sense of the world through work. Being agents of change and what not (always to be held in tension with the fact that we're a broken lot, and along with being the glory of the universe, is also the refuse of it). But then I think my definition of work might be called into question.
The idea of Homo faber may also cause problems because we start clutching for eternity (a true desire, in of itself, but corrupted when we think we can create it). That is, we work in building something as a way leaving a mark that will outlast us. I wonder if our desires for "stuff" (and what a stuffy lot we are!) is our 21st century way of dealing with that? Permanence and security in possessions (for why create when you can buy the same for $19.95 on ebay?) So we strangle our creativity, even as we suffocate our fears for the future. A double death.
Also, it may not just be a question of internal moral decay(which I think exists whether you're a CEO, busy mother, or on the dole), but of the individual and the community; one's obligations to others as fellow human beings.
I think one's character, is, to a certain extent, reflected in what one does with one's life (how one lives one's life, that's probably better semantics)- but this dichotomy of busyness/idleness is mostly unhelpful, I agree, and I'm sorry to have introduced them. They're mostly emotive terms, loaded with assumptions and subjective judgement, aren't they? Not really any way descriptors of actual states.
Can a life be full, rich, without being busy, or idle? Do we need to revisit our doctrine of humanity?