When Did Busy Become a Badge of Honor?
Does anyone remember a time when being busy just meant having a lot to do and having a full schedule? I do. However, somewhere along the way something changed, and it became something else and something different. Somehow, we started treating being busy and busyness as evidence of being important. Somehow, levels of productivity equated to personal worth. I know my life in my full-time job turned from asking how someone is doing or how was their weekend to comparing our calendars and how busy I was and then celebrating how tired and worn out I had gotten. And without us even realizing it, we have inadvertently started and accepted an unseen message that slowing down has become a sign of weakness or falling behind.
Constant activity and meaningful progress or productivity are not the same thing. Perhaps this has become part of the problem. It’s too easy to fill our daily calendars with things that don’t really matter to us. While we treat a packed schedule as a badge of honor, is it really creating the type of fulfillment in your life that you would expect it to?
Living a mindful life invites curiosity within each of us. In this context, it allows us to question some of the things that we assume are naturally born within us but could actually just be something we’ve inherited. I mean, think about it. When did not always being busy or consumed with some type of activity, rather than say, allowing ourselves time to rest, become guilty pleasures? Furthermore, why do we apologize for it? Shouldn’t time to rest, to reflect, or to stay present in a moment without completing some type of action exist as something that has a positive impact on our lives in said moment and moving forward? It worries me that feelings like these, so easily adopted, rarely begin with us. Like a lot of other constructions in our lives, are they born from workplace culture, social media culture, advertising, and society at large? What worries me more is that these things start to become “truths.”
I appreciate you letting me get that off my chest (smile).
Awareness grants us permission to ask these types of questions. So instead of trying to see how much we can accomplish in one day, perhaps we learn to ask HOW was I living today? This can be extremely useful if our goal is to stabilize our lives in a way that creates the space for choosing our next set of tasks with intention instead of urgency. Subtle shifts like these have far-reaching impacts. It helps us to develop strategies that recreate the idea value rather than measuring it by how exhausted we are at the end of the day.
As we continue into the future in this fast-paced society, the type of culture we immerse ourselves in will only ask us to move faster and to do more. It’s almost as if we are running out of time. Are we really running out of time or are we finding ways to fill up the time we’re given with the randomness that life can be or will become? Speed and direction are clearly not the same thing. That said, maybe one of the wisest decisions we can make is to intentionally slow down just long enough to make sure we are creating the type of life we actually want to live.
Stay Mindful…
Rebirth
