I’ve noticed something strange going on. I ask people how they are and the answer is almost always the same.
Busy!
So busy!
Crazy busy!
Ridiculously busy!
It has confused me.
Are we meant to be so busy that we look around, another week has just gone, flown by in a haze of “busy”?
Are we becoming so busy because of ambition or drive or anxiety, because we are addicted to busyness or worse still, we dread what we might have to face in its absence.
Almost everyone I know is busy.
Busy is fine if it’s balanced out with some time out.
But if we are using this phrase as a standard response when asked how we are then maybe it’s time to look deeper?
The present hysteria is not a necessary or an inevitable condition of life; it’s something we have chosen.
It’s like a hamster wheel we just keep running. Running on busy.
So this week, I want to bring your awareness back into the ‘fact’ that you have a ‘choice’.
I want to stand up for the time out, for the ‘be-ing, not the do-ing’ just sometimes the idleness and the down time.
You know, the stuff we love but are sometimes afraid of or choose to feel guilty for doing.
Idleness is not an indulgence; it is as indispensable to the brain as vitamin D is to the body, and deprived of it we suffer mental affliction and physical exhaustion.
The space and quiet that idleness provides is a necessary condition for standing back from life, for taking time to slow down, to make unexpected connections and gaining those wonderful free life gifts like inspiration, energy and zest. Things that are impossible to gain when were so ‘busy’.
It is, paradoxically, necessary to a little take space in order to get any real work done.
Imagine what life would look like and how it would feel if you chose to take time out every so often. To pamper yourself with a massage, to come home early from work to curl up and read a book, to choose to take a walk through the park in the morning before starting your day or to simply switch off, hang out and be.
People, life is too short to be busy.
Get your space on…
Jacqueline