It’s not enough to be busy; so are the ants.
The question is, “What are we busy about?”
– Henry David Thoreau
“What if we stopped celebrating being busy as a measurement of importance and success? What if instead, we celebrated how much time we had spent listening, pondering, meditating, and enjoying time with the most important people in our lives?”
When was the last time you asked someone how they were and they answered, “I have just spent a whole day, listening, pondering and being still, accepting my life as it is? Never?
Why is it, that ‘busyness’ equates to significance in our world? What decisions would you make today, if tomorrow didn’t exist?
Each of us contribute to this busy world, so just for today let’s ask, “What are we busy about?
LIVING IN THIS MOMENT 
Reblogged this on Sacred Touches.
Thank you Natalie 💚
My pleasure😊💝🌷
“What decisions would you make today, if tomorrow didn’t exist?” This is a great challenge! If only we all lived this way, what would our world be like.
I’m sure it would be a calmer more present world. Thank you 💕
Wow Karen. Wonderful question. I don’t know.
Writing in the first century, Seneca was startled by how little people seemed to value their lives as they were living them—how busy, terribly busy, everyone seemed to be, mortal in their fears, immortal in their desires and wasteful of their time. He noticed how even wealthy people hustled their lives along, ruing their fortune, anticipating a time in the future when they would rest. “People are frugal in guarding their personal property; but as soon as it comes to squandering time they are most wasteful of the one thing in which it is right to be stingy,” he observed in “On the Shortness of Life”, perhaps the very first time-management self-help book. Time on Earth may be uncertain and fleeting, but nearly everyone has enough of it to take some deep breaths, think deep thoughts and smell some roses, deeply. “Life is long if you know how to use it,” he counselled.
Nearly 2,000 years later, de Grazia offered similar advice. Modern life, that leisure-squandering, money-hoarding, grindstone-nosing, frippery-buying business, left him exasperated. He saw that everyone everywhere was running, running, running, but to where? For what? People were trading their time for all sorts of things, but was the exchange worth it? He closed his 1962 tome, “Of Time, Work and Leisure”, with a prescription:
Lean back under a tree, put your arms behind your head, wonder at the pass we’ve come to, smile and remember that the beginnings and ends of man’s every great enterprise are untidy.
~ “Why is everyone so busy” (The Economist, December 20, 2014)
Wow! Even after receiving all that wisdom and knowledge many years ago, we are still not listening! I heard somewhere the other day that we live our life according to our breath. If we breathe shallow short breaths, we live that way. But if we breathe long deep slow breaths, it creates space and more time in our day! Happy breathing 🙏🏻
So true Karen. This is Seneca speaking. How many hundreds and hundreds of years ago! Shocking. We still don’t get it.
It is shocking 😟
True words of giving us sometime to ourselves in this busy day doing nothing.
So true! Thank you Kamal 🌈
Welcome karen
It’s like when the person serving you at the grocery store asks, ‘so what have you been doing today?’ and you have to scramble around to find fictitious busy things to replace your honest answer which is ‘nothing’!
Ha! That’s so true Julie. We all feel pressured to be busy 💚
Love love love. Great post.
Thank you Anita 💕🌈
Idle time need not be wasted.
-Alan
Exactly! Thanks Alan 🌈
Oh, I hope we get to that point in the world! To contemplate, be peaceful, take time to be kind to ourselves and others:).
Yes me too Kristine 🌈
Good point!
I’ve spent the day watching the snowflakes fall pretty much all day! The trees are stunningly beautiful. 🙂
Sounds like a beautiful day Eliza! We should all be that busy. ☃❄️⛄️❄️
Ha!
Thanks. Provokes much to reflect upon.
Thanks Don 🌈
Busy about being. 🙂
The only way to live Mary! Happy being 🌈💚
Oh, this post asks a very important question. It also reminded me of the time I was in the 24/7 rat race. One of those days I heard myself answering “I’m so busy” for the fifth (or so) time…and it startled me. I thought about it and reflected…for a moment. Before starting to run again 🙂
That’s a great example Helen. And the only answer in life is to slow down so we can see the illusion we are living in. Thank you 💕💚
Great question!
Thanks Cynthia 💕💚
I have a friend who at work was always ‘busy’. Now she is retired she is still ‘busy’. I found her incredibly annoying. It was as if she measured her importance by how busy she was, and in fact, in my estimation, she wasn’t busy at all. I chuckle about it sometimes, especially when every time we try to arrange to meet, she always likes to remind me and herself, how busy she is before she can fix a date in her diary. What is it with these busy people?:)
Great post, by the way!
I think we all have a busy part to us, even if it’s our minds. Once we see that in ourselves, we offer an opportunity for others to see that in themselves. Thanks Marie. 💚💕
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Some people make busy-ness a business, but it’s all about priorities. I just finished grocery shopping, and now I shall sit in this recliner for the next hour, doing nothing. When you’re busy, you always have an excuse to tell people why you can’t visit with them. It’s why so many fathers are absent. I can hear “The Cat’s in the Cradle” playing off in the distance…
So true! It’s up to each of us to make time for ourselves and each other. Thank you 💕💚