Busy tunes me into the fast life and out of the connected life, the passionate life, the meaningful life.
Busy
The world spins in space at around 1000 miles or 1600 kms per hour.
That’s if you’re standing at the equator. It’s probably a little slower where you are right now. Still, we’re moving at a cracking pace. All the time. Even when we sleep.
And yet we have no sense of motion.
Our world seems solid and still. Safe. We’ve learned to tune our senses into the things we need to be aware of and away from things that distract us.
But lately I’ve begun to wonder if the capacity to tune in and tune out is working for me or against me.
I find myself drowning in an ocean of overwhelm a little too often. My emotions jangle at the headlines before I’ve had time to read the facts. I can’t find time for coffee with friends so I snatch a few seconds on social media to keep in touch.
Sometimes it feels like my life is spinning faster than the planet.
I’m so busy being busy, I can’t find time to stop and think. Choices are made on the run, without time to consider consequences or options.
Then I read a book called I don’t have time.
Admission time. I read it because a friend of mine co-wrote it. I thought I was doing her a favour, but it was me who ended up with the win.
This book helped me see that busy is an addiction, as powerful as heroin or gambling, but it’s a socially supported addiction.
Like smoking in the 1950’s – busy is the new ‘must have’ accessory, and it’s just as deadly.
Busy keeps us from seeing uncomfortable truths and asking difficult questions. It keeps us from making the powerful choices that would enrich and even extend our lives. It fills our heads with white noise and drowns out our inner voices.
Busy tunes me into the fast life and out of the connected life, the passionate life, the meaningful life.
I’ve made a commitment to myself, I’m giving up busy.
I’ve got the handbook now. I’m reading it through for the second time and this time I’m doing the fifteen minute exercises. I will get clean. I will get my life back.
I’m stepping off the merry-go-round and to quote the classic nineties movie Trainspotting – I’m choosing life!