Jerry Sittser in his book ‘The Will of God as a Way of Life,’ a chapter he called ‘Obstacles That Get in the Way, wrote:
“Something has happened to change the way we live. I welcome the opportunities, but deplore the busyness. I have not heeded Mahatma Gandhi’s famous words, “There is more to life than increasing its speed.” Nor have I listened to the warnings of Francis de Sales, “Nothing done impulsively and in a hurry is ever well done. . . .We always do fast enough when we do well. . . . Drones make more noise and are more in a hurry than the bees but they make no honey. Thus those who rush around with tormenting anxiety and noisy solicitude neither to much nor well.”2
As if our present busyness is not enough, we feel pressure to accept new responsibilities, for we fear that we will miss out on something important or let someone down if we decline. Yet rarely do we consider the implications of the choices we make. Each new responsibility puts us deeper into the hole of distraction, stress, and overcommitment.
“. . . . When I am asked. . . to speak at a weekend retreat in another city or state, I force myself to consider the hidden costs. Not only does the time away demand something from me, but also the time I need to prepare, the energy I must find to speak well and to get to know the people there, the housework I will have to do when I return home, and the loss of a weekend I would of otherwise had with my kids. Strangely, I often feel guilty when I decline an invitation. I wonder sometimes what drives me to take on so many responsibilities, what makes me prone to be so busy, what deludes me into thinking I can do it all and have it all. I am like a man who is on a mission to everywhere.
Thomas Merton lamented this idolatry of busyness, which in his mind destroys our capacity for living contented and contemplative lives. Ironically our very productivity keeps us from hearing the voice of God and doing the will of God.
“How many there are who are in a worse state still: they never even get as far as contemplation because they are attached to activities and enterprises that seem to be important. Blinded by their desire for ceaseless motion, for a constant sense of achievement, famished with a crude hunger for results, for visible and tangible success, they work themselves into a state in which they cannot believe they are pleasing God unless they are busy with a dozen jobs at the same time. 3
. . . .The problem is exacerbated because we have made work itself an idol. Max Weber, a leading social theorist writing in the early twentieth century, argued in The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism that what to the Puritans in seventeenth-century America was an expression of discipline, obedience, and even joy has become for us an obligation. The Puritans strove to honor God by working hard. Then it was a matter of religious conviction, which for the most part they freely chose. Now it’s a matter of survival, and it has been turned into a virtual pathology.
. . . .We earn high grades to get into graduate schools in order to secure jobs with the best companies, hoping to rise to the top of our profession and earn a six-figure income. We work all the time to stay competitive.”The Puritan wanted to work in a calling; we are forced to do so. . . . In [the Puritan] view the care for external goods should only lie on the shoulders of a ‘saint like a light cloak, which can be thrown aside at any moment.’ But fate decreed that the cloak should become an iron cage.”4
As a result, we develop techniques to manage time, resources, and people. We learn to compete and strain to win. We break the speed limit to get to meetings on time, use a cell phone and email in order to master the art of multi-tasking, and drive ourselves until we reach the point of exhaustion, just to stay competitive. We do not think much about changing the system because we are too intent on succeeding in it.
Jesus Taught, “For those who want to save their life will lose it, and those who lose their life for my sake will find it. For what will it profit them if they gain the whole world but forfeit their life? Or what will they give in return for their life?”5 Sadly, in society today each of us faces the terrifying possibility that should we fail to manage our time and resources properly, to get involved in everything we can, and to push ourselves to ever higher levels of achievement, we will be left behind, passed over for promotion, forced to live on a modest income, and consigned to be the dreaded status of being ordinary.
3. Thomas Merton, New seeds of Contemplation (New York: New Directions, 1961), 206.
4. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons 1958), 181.
(Posts with a preamble asterisk * are for a more general audience, and not specific to teachings of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.)
