It's fall and the busyness is ramping up again. Sometimes if feels as if busyness has become a status symbol. As if the busier we are, the more important we feel. We congratulate one another on putting so much on our plates and performing a circus act of juggling it all. It can even feel passively competitive whenever the conversation turns to our daily lives and we start regaling one another with our crazy schedules.
Busyness has become so engrained in our lives that it feels as though it is essential and creates the illusion of purpose and productivity. We have grown accustomed to cramming five things into a day that is only meant for three. We talk about "making time", but it's a misnomer. We are only given 24 hours in each day and no matter how hard we try and push the limits, that's all we get. We're trying to make time instead of taking the time we're given.
We've set the tempo of our lives to the forward moving pace of technology, putting increasing emphasis on convenience and instant gratification. Becoming unbusy and slowing down is a lost art, a luxury that we literally don't have time for. We have mistaken streamlining for simplifying. Instead of taking things out of our lives that steal time from the essential, we make everything faster and continue to fill the empty spaces with more and more.
I'm guilty of all of it. The cramming, the complaining about over-scheduling, the lack of time to recharge. And now that school is starting the activities are starting up again. And even though my kids are only involved in one extra curricular activity each, it still feels like we are running all the time. Always running.
Do you ever feel like you need to stop and just breathe?
In and out, in and out.
Close your eyes and fill your lungs.
Breathe out all the busyness, the hurriedness, the thinly veiled chaos.
Stop running at the breakneck pace we have normalized and just. breathe.
Busyness has become so engrained in our lives that it feels as though it is essential and creates the illusion of purpose and productivity. We have grown accustomed to cramming five things into a day that is only meant for three. We talk about "making time", but it's a misnomer. We are only given 24 hours in each day and no matter how hard we try and push the limits, that's all we get. We're trying to make time instead of taking the time we're given.
We've set the tempo of our lives to the forward moving pace of technology, putting increasing emphasis on convenience and instant gratification. Becoming unbusy and slowing down is a lost art, a luxury that we literally don't have time for. We have mistaken streamlining for simplifying. Instead of taking things out of our lives that steal time from the essential, we make everything faster and continue to fill the empty spaces with more and more.
I'm guilty of all of it. The cramming, the complaining about over-scheduling, the lack of time to recharge. And now that school is starting the activities are starting up again. And even though my kids are only involved in one extra curricular activity each, it still feels like we are running all the time. Always running.
Do you ever feel like you need to stop and just breathe?
In and out, in and out.
Close your eyes and fill your lungs.
Breathe out all the busyness, the hurriedness, the thinly veiled chaos.
Stop running at the breakneck pace we have normalized and just. breathe.
Just. Breathe.
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