At Peace in the Devil’s Workshop By Kathleen Thompson
Are you really busy or simply mouthing the modern mantra—“I’m so busy”—that might be an excuse not to slow down and sniff the flowers? I mean, how would anybody know you’re important if you’re not busy?
“I’ve been so busy lately. Incredibly busy. Insanely
busy. That’s why I haven’t called you. Or stopped
over. You’ve been busy, too? Yeah, I know. I thought once
summer got here I’d have more time to read a book maybe,
or float around on the lake, or just chill. But no. I’ve
been too busy.”
I heard myself say this the other day and I was appalled. “Do
you hear yourself?” I said to myself. “What’s
up with all this ‘busy’ stuff? I suddenly felt that
“busy” was such a lie, such a cop-out, such a stupid
way to live, not to mention a totally inaccurate way to describe
how I actually live my life.
But it just tumbled out of my mouth. Everybody says it. It’s
the default response to the question, “How have you been?”
I wondered what would happen if I were no longer allowed to say
“busy.” What if “busy” were banned forever
from my vocabulary? I could say, “Well, I have been so involved
in my work and with my family, that many other social interactions
have fallen away lately. I have missed you though, and I am really
enjoying seeing you now.”
Could I say that? That’s more accurate, certainly, but
not as big and important-sounding and virtuous and productivity-oriented
as, “I’ve been so busy.” “Busy”
implies I’m getting things done, working hard, or at the
very least, keeping my hands out of use as the devil’s workshop.
But what if I had a lot of things to do in a very short amount
of time? Wouldn’t I then be justified in claiming to be
“busy?” How, I wondered, could I do a lot of things
in a short amount of time and not be “busy?” Could
I manage the shopping and the bill-paying and the laundry and
the dishes without wishing they’d be over with quickly so
I could move on to the next, and much more crucial thing on my
list? Could I simply do one thing at a time without worrying or
even thinking about the next thing? Because if I could, that would
be the cure for “busy.”
Winston Churchill defined history as, “Just one damned
thing after another,” and this seems to me the quintessential
Zen way of looking at what really happens in time. Why do we have
to label ourselves “busy?” Why can’t we just
be really into what we are doing? Life can only be lived one “now”
moment after another, anyway.
Even beavers, who are the archetypes, (along with bees), of “busyness”
aren’t really “busy.” They simply drag sticks
and branches through the water all day. They just make dams. They’re
not too damned busy.
But the Now moment is boring, we think. We don’t want to
live there, we say. Now is so over. We want “next”—the
next thing, the next episode, the next shiny gadget. We’re
already waiting for iPhone 2.0.
It’s like we’re always rushing to get there, but
the “there” keeps moving. It’s like teasing
a cat with a piece of string. The cat grabs for the string and
you keep pulling it out of reach. Again and again. But eventually
the cat gets bored with the game and takes a nap. (Cats are clearly
smarter than we are.) We keep playing this dumb game of “next”
our whole lives. We never live in the moment; we’re totally
entranced with the string.
So what’s so wrong with that? Well, for one thing, we
could wind up missing stuff. Like our lives. Or just today. If
I had been “busy,” this morning, for instance, I might
have missed the cedar waxwing in the viburnum. I would not have
noticed the scent of hay in the cool morning air. I most surely
would have overlooked the new flowers on the purple violet over
the kitchen sink and not even heard the crickets.
So, vowing never again to be “busy,” I finished my
coffee, made my list for the day, and walked outside. I noticed
immediately that the phlox along the driveway didn’t have
a list. Thinking it might be onto something, I leaned in close
and whispered, “How have you been?” It just nodded
and swayed in the breeze. And twinkled pink.
Kathleen Thompson is the owner of Main Street Yoga in Mansfield,
Pennsylvania. You can contact her at (570) 660-5873, www.yogamansfield.com,
or Yogamama@mountainhomemag.com. |
