Preamble thought. . . The following post refers to a time (turn of the century and even two years ago) before COVID-19 interrupted all of our lives. That makes some of what follows irrelevant to the here and now, but the here and now won’t always be this way. We can all make adjustments that are caring and focused for the interests/safety of those we rub shoulders with. In the meantime there is still much wisdom in the thoughts expressed below. kdm
We will always have a need to review our priorities, to re-assess from time to time. From his book “the will of God as a Way of Life” Jerry Sittser wrote:
Something has happened to change the way we live. I welcome the opportunities but I deplore the busyness. I have not heeded Mahatma Gandhi’s 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 do neither 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 responsibility puts us deeper in the hole of distraction, stress, and over commitment.
When I am asked, for example, 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 of me, the time I need to prepare, the energy I must find to speak well and get to know the people there, the housework I will have to do when I return home, and the loss of the weekend I would have 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 was 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 for which they cannot believe they are pleasing God unless they are busy doing a dozen jobs at the same time.3
. . . . Years ago I read a book on time management that promised me total success if I followed the author’s proven strategy. I could do “anything I wanted,” the author claimed and I could gain “complete control over my life.” I did find his ideas useful, and I did learn how to manage my time better. But his book, however helpful, ignored the bigger problem of busyness and fragmentation. Are productivity and efficiency virtues? Is my commitment to success always a good thing? Is it worth it to become master of the world at the expense of my soul?
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 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 is a matte of survival, and it has been turned into a virtual pathology.
. . . . 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 to the point of exhaustion, just to stay competitive. We do not think much about changing the system because we are too content 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. But 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 out 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, forced to live on a modest income, and consigned to the dreaded status of being ordinary. ~Jerry Sittser, the Will of God as a Way of Life (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Zondervan, 2000, 2004), 46-48
(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.)
