The Disease of Being Busy

[Lodestar]

..."we are human beings, not human doings".

The Disease of Being Busy

I saw a dear friend a few days ago. I stopped by to ask her how she was doing, how her family was. She looked up, voice lowered, and just whimpered: “I’m so busy… I am so busy… have so much going on.”

Almost immediately after, I ran into another friend and asked him how he was. Again, same tone, same response: “I’m just so busy… got so much to do.”

The tone was exacerbated, tired, even overwhelmed.

And it’s not just adults. When we moved to North Carolina about ten years ago, we were thrilled to be moving to a city with a great school system. We found a diverse neighborhood, filled with families. Everything felt good, felt right.

After we settled in, we went to one of the friendly neighbors, asking if their daughter and our daughter could get together and play. The mother, a really lovely person, reached for her phone and pulled out the calendar function. She scrolled… and scrolled… and scrolled. She finally said: “She has a 45-minute opening two and half weeks from now. The rest of the time it’s gymnastics, piano, and voice lessons. She’s just…. so busy.”

Horribly destructive habits start early, really early.

How did we end up living like this? Why do we do this to ourselves? Why do we do this to our children? When did we forget that we are human beings, not human doings?

MORE
http://www.onbeing.org/blog/the-disease-of-being-busy/7023

[bemildred]

1. Play is better than work. nt

[fasttense]

2. It's a function of capitalism

We are always competing for the remaining resources that the uber rich have not grabbed away. With constant competition comes constant work, unless you happen to be born to the lucky sperm club or you are a psychopathic Wall Street serial killer err...I mean CEO.

[Lodestar]

3. I agree that there are values that have taken hold as a result of industrialization and capitalism

not to mention a puritan work ethic that is not exactly holistic. But stress can also be a harbinger for change because it is unsustainable. And its also a good indicator that something is out of balance, something we are becoming more and more aware of and are all making compensatory changes to right that inbalance in small and large ways. Ultimately I think it is our changing values that will
create the tipping point for our current outmoded system....like a thousand cuts or a thousand
small personal choices in our individual lives that begin to add up to a changed value system that
can no longer support the old set of values.

[adirondacker]

4. +1000. nt

[yurbud]

5. another reason why people are so busy: job based health insurance

instead of hiring more people to spread out the work load, employers try to get as much as possible per worker so they don't have to drop that big chunk of change for another employees health insurance.

I see that at my job teaching community college. Until very recently, most schools offered NO health insurance to part time instructors and pressured full time instructors to work overload, rather than hire more full time instructors.

After teaching for ten years, I found a district that offers health insurance to part timers, but just the instructors themselves--families would only be covered if we paid for it ourselves, which would have been half my paycheck at that school.