Life without Busyness

If work and leisure are soon to be subordinated to this
one utopian principle--absolute busyness--then utopia
and melancholy will come to coincide:  an age without conflict
will dawn, perpetually busy--and without consciousness.

Gunther Grass


I think we may be near the age that Gunther warned about, if we're not there already.  I've known plenty of people in my life who have been so extremely addicted to working that they hardly do anything else at all, and they rarely if ever have time available to spend with other people--even their own families.  And if they're satisfied with the results they're seeing, then who am I to tell them that what they're doing is harmful?  It's very common to watch other people make drastic mistakes that will harm them in the long term, but be unable to convince them that a change would help them because they see the world only in the short term.

One of my goals of the last couple of decades has been to not be too busy to enjoy life.  I didn't want to get so caught up in work and tasks around the house and other obligations that I wasn't able to do things that I enjoy, and spend time with people whose company I enjoy.  I found that it was relatively easy to do so, for it took some simple decision-making that was rather painless.  Personally, I like being a helpful person, but at time in my past I've been somewhat too helpful, and lost some valuable opportunities for some very nice experiences because I committed myself to help someone else.  Interestingly enough, whenever I've helped others, it's always seemed that they didn't really need much help at all, or that they could have easily done the job themselves.  My presence wasn't at all necessary, and my time could have been much better spent elsewhere.

Of course, that's not always true.  There are plenty of legitimate opportunities to help people and organizations that truly do need our help.  What I've learned, though, is that that person doesn't have to be me.  There are plenty of other people who are able to help just as well--or even better--than I can.  And if someone else is doing the work, I have time to do something that can be reinvigorating, rejuvenating, for me.

We face a lot of pressure to make ourselves busy meeting other people's needs.  Many other people have gotten very good at getting others to do their work for them, or at least a part of it.  The boss at work can pressure a subordinate to take on extra tasks; the person in a relationship with us can manipulate or guilt-trip us into spending our time on things we don't necessarily want to be doing.

Our task as human beings who are responsible for our own well-being is to make sure that we don't overextend or overcommit ourselves.  We need to be sure that we don't sabotage the chances we have to be happy and to live life on our own terms, rather than spending our precious time on tasks that we take on because others ask us to do so.  Personally, I'm working on this right now because I just retired, and I want to make sure that any time ahead of me is going to be spent wisely, with a balance between living and working, being busy doing tasks and being busy taking care of myself (see below).  No matter where we are in life, it may be a good idea to step back from the busyness and make sure that what we're spending our time on is fulfilling and healthy, and that we don't get so busy doing things for others that we spend no time doing things for ourselves.  Because we're each worth it.


I lied and said I was busy.
I was busy;
but not in a way most people understand.
I was busy taking deeper breaths.
I was busy silencing irrational thoughts.
I was busy calming a racing heart.
I was busy telling myself I am okay.
Sometimes, this is my busy -
and I will not apologize for it.

Brittin Oakman

From Whom Can I Learn?

If someone is able to show me that what I think or do is not right, I will
happily change, for I seek the truth, by which no one was ever truly
harmed.  It is the person who continues in their self-deception
and ignorance who is harmed.     -Marcus Aurelius


What Marcus says here would not be received well by many people in the 21st-century United States.  Somehow, many people in this country have completely shut out the possibility that someone who disagrees with them may actually be right, so when we're wrong, we become "the person who continues in their self-deception and ignorance."  We won't even consider the possibility that someone we disagree with could teach us something, so a huge portion of the population, for us, is eliminated as a possible source of learning.

What has happened to the concept of having an open mind, of listening to others--no matter what their background--to see if they know something that we don't know, to see if they can teach us something?  Having an open mind means listening to what another person says without putting it through the filters that we so often employ:  What is their political party?  What is their gender?  What is their race?

And on and on.

If we want to live our lives fully, it's very important that we learn from virtually anyone.  That doesn't mean that we have to approve of their paths in life or of decisions that they make--it simply means that we hear what they say and weigh in our minds whether it makes sense or not, whether there's something to learn there or not.  If someone gives me good advice but I ignore it because of whom he voted for in the last election, then I'm going to limit myself and miss opportunities because I've been judgmental about another human being.  I can blame it on his or her vote if I want to, but the truth is that the fault lies with me and my unwillingness to listen.

What Marcus is talking about is our tendency to not want to be told that we're wrong.  If I were to take something that isn't mine, for example, and the guy next door told me that it was wrong to take it, would I respect his opinion more if he voted for the same person I voted for?  Because the truth of the matter is that my action was wrong, no matter who tells me so.  But if I can dismiss what the person tells me because I don't agree with him on politics, or because I know he's a racist, or because I know that he's done something wrong himself, then I'm losing out on an important learning experience.  And really, all we have in life is our learning--the only way to improve ourselves as human beings is to learn more about life and living, and people we agree with or respect aren't the only possible teachers out there.

Criticism is often much easier to take when it comes from someone we know and trust.  We tend to be more willing to listen to people who have a track record of supporting us rather than putting us down or arguing with us.  But we really should be able and willing to listen to everyone who has something to say about what we do.  And once it's said, then we can decide whether the words are meant to help us or to hurt us, if the words have been constructive or destructive.  And once we've figured that out, it's up to us to take the words to heart or to reject them, to make changes based on what we've heard or to continue on in the same ways as before.

My self-deception helps no one, and it can cause a lot of harm.  Some of the most important things that I've learned in life have come from people I didn't even like, especially in the form of teachers at all levels from grade school to college.  The teachers I've liked have taught me a great deal, but so have the teachers I haven't liked at all.  If I'm doing something very wrong, I hope to be told so, so that I can make some changes that will allow me to get things right, and that will thus allow me to help others more often and more effectively, which is, after all, my main purpose for being here (at least, that's what I believe it to be).
  
  
  

   
   

Finding Happiness in Connection

On our own, feeling alienated from the world we had been
created from, cut off from the full extent of its abundance,
people were no longer happy.  We began to search for the
happiness we had lost.  When we found something that
reminded us of it, we tried to possess it and accumulate
more--thereby introducing Stress into our lives.  But searching
for lasting happiness and accumulating temporary
substitutes for it brought us no satisfaction.    -Benjamin Hoff, The Te of Piglet

When he's using the word "us," Hoff is talking about the people who live in western societies, those places where success has been defined as earning more money and having more things, and those people who have unique skills and talents end up working for some corporate giant or another, never using those skills and letting life slip by without developing their skills in ways that can help others.  It's hard for us to imagine now, but many people used to be able to find happiness without having much to do.  They didn't have computers with which to spend their spare hours; they didn't have movies and television shows that could help them to "escape" reality every now and then; they didn't have boatloads of activities to partake in to keep their minds off of themselves and the lives that they're leading.

Of course, just because people didn't have all of these things in their lives didn't mean that they were necessarily happy.  There were many problems that people dealt with in the past that we don't have to face today--family and friends dying from what are now minor illnesses and injuries; being "stuck" in the town you were born in, without having a real option of leaving; having to take on the family trade for the rest of your life even though you end up doing something that you don't really like.  These are just a few of the many ways that life was harder for many people in the past than it is today.

I don't know if even Hoff could tell us when we started to feel "alienated from the world we had been created from."  My guess is that it's long, long, long ago, because we are now truly separated, most of us completely.  There are many people who never spend any time in nature, even for a walk in the park.  Most of us use the natural world as a short-term escape from what basically has ended up being our lives:  stress, work, tension, deadlines, judgment, conflict.  Many of us do search out activities that can help us balance these things, but doing that doesn't eliminate the effects that the modern world has on us; rather, it simply provides us with moments of clarity and even happiness, but these are moments that we almost inevitably leave behind us in order to go back to our daily lives.

So are things hopeless?  I don't think so.  Can our happy moments be extended and expanded, meaning that we're happier more often than not?  I think they can.

So does Hoff, of course.  His first sentence tells us very clearly that he sees the way to be happy as not "feeling alienated from the world we had been created from."  This simply means looking at the lives that we're living and identifying the things that we do that alienate us from the world.  Do we spend too much time indoors, being entertained passively by television or Internet?  Do we spend too much time in our cars, never going for walks and feeling the fresh air and smelling and hearing the world around us?

Do we make time for experiences with the natural world, including getting together to talk with friends?  They're a part of the natural world, too, but we see them so rarely, or only during certain occasions, like church services or activities at our kids' schools.  Do we know someplace where we can buy tomatoes straight off the vine instead of buying them at the supermarket, where they're typically anywhere from one to six weeks old.  Do we have any places in nature where we can go for some simple quiet time, where we can listen to nothing but the sounds of the birds and bugs and any animals, and simply enjoy not having anything that we have to be doing at the present moment?

We don't need to become hermits, and we don't have to go for extended camping trips in the middle of nowhere if we want to counter the alienation that we feel from nature.  We simply need to make decisions that put us with it and in it.  Instead of a trip to the mall, a hike could be invigorating.  Instead of another lunch in a restaurant or fast-food joint, a picnic lunch by a lake or in a park can give us energy and raise our spirits.  Many, many people have pointed to our loss of connection with nature as a major cause of unhappiness, so perhaps it's time to pay attention to them and make some sort of connection that can help us to feel more at home in the world.

I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush
of scenery-- air, mountains, trees,
people.  I thought, "This is what
it is to be happy.”

Sylvia Plath