Saturday, May 23, 2009

Busy


What is it about busyness that makes life feel so exciting? When I rush from event to event I feel important, needed, wanted. When I have friends around me I feel like I belong. When there are emails in my inbox, messages on my voicemail and mail in my mailbox I don't have to feel how lonely I am.

But the reality is that all this busyness is lifeless. It holds the appearance of life, but it is not life. True life cannot be felt at the speed of an open freeway, it cannot be felt when I am consumed so much by the next moment that I cannot enjoy the one I am in. So, I slow down. I wait. I enjoy. When I can slow down enough to feel what I really need, and not just what I want, I can feel life emerging. So much of my busyness is driven by what I want: I want to feel apart of five different groups of people. I want to be wanted. I want to be needed. I want to feel important and popular. I want to feel excitement.

What I want though, is not always what I need. Sometimes I need to experience how unimportant I really feel. Maybe I simply need to be reminded that I belong to God and not to any one group. What if what I need is to be stopped?

2 comments:

Melanie said...

So interesting... I am noticing that while here in Africa... I am NOT busy in the way Americans are busy. Africa simply does not move at that speed... and I am discovering so much life that is skipped over to be dealt with later inbetween the minutes and hours that are no longer taken up with the 1001 things I would have been doing, if living stateside. I'm glad you have found that while there, I needed a whole continent to slow me down. Love your insights... keep them coming. :)

StephenGrindle said...

yeah, uganda did the same thing to me... i was so pissed for the first 3 weeks i was there cause i could only get one thing done a day and that was totally anti my task-oriented, get-er-done american, capatalist attitude.