Busyness. It’s a persistent theme in my life, tapping me on the shoulder, demanding to be dealt with in a new way. With some freshness. Some softness. Sigh… some softness. I like being busy. But too busy and I ricochet off away from myself. Away from my heart.
Problem is, I’m so used to being busy that sometimes I manufacture “too busy”, because that’s what I’m used to. I’m used to responding, reacting, coping with busyness. It’s my default position. Or it was.
In the past few days I’ve been really aware of how often I freak out about being too busy…I take a breath, return to my heart and, watching my frenzied self flinging off into outer space to attend to all my crazy crap, I realise this doesn’t have to be “too busy”. It can be just busy enough. And I can smile at it. And stay close to my heart.
It’s a shift in perspective that takes a bit of awareness, centredness and also an acceptance that this is just the way life is now. There ain’t no utopia to return to. There’s no wonderfully sublime default position that, once we get through our to-do list, we have to finally get to.
Nope, busy – at least for me – is here to stay.
(PS. When I say things like “stay close to my heart”, I’m referring to a feeling of groundedness. For me it works well to imagine sitting in my heart space. As in, not in my head and not in the outside world.)
I’ve been working on this acceptance for the past few days. Last night Sky, a spiritual adviser and meditation teacher I used to see when I was working as editor of Cosmopolitan (she was my refreshing counterpoint to the ra-ra of the rest of my life), sent me a lovely email.
Sky (that’s her above) often picks up on EXACTLY what I’ve been feeling. It’s a nice take on busyness:
We are all experiencing how rapidly time is flying past, and so often filled to overflowing with activity and busyness. Getting lost in this busyness cost us our equanimity. Every soul in the universe is pure potential and each moment is an opportunity for mastery over our realm of matter. Such mastery comes with the realisation that there is nothing to master. When BigPond fails to transfer the broadband to the new apartment, or the queue at Ikea is tediously long and then you discover what you have bought doesn’t fit anyway – these are the golden moments of mastery. Awareness is all of it. What are you aware of in this moment? The inaccessible internet or the sublime peace that come with the deep knowing that love is the principle and process of the universe. Curious, how with this awareness, comes a call that the internet is now working.
How are you coping with your busyness right now? How are you not coping?
