Recently,
I attended a poetry retreat. The featured poet was the Palestinian-American
poet, Naomi Shihab Nye (poet, songwriter and teacher).
During
her presentation, she said she has begun to ‘eliminate useless words’ from her
life. And she started with the word, ‘busy.’ She explained that we use ‘busy’
as an answer to how we are feeling or why we cannot do things. “Busy’ has become
some kind of weird excuse and even a description of American life. But, that
the truth is that ‘busy’ is a consequence of the choices we make to say, “yes”
to too many things or to fail to say, “no” to enough things. And that the truth
is, we do not have to experience ourselves as “busy.”
Her
comments made me pause and think of how often I describe myself as busy or how
often I accept it when people tell me they are too busy. And that she is right.
“Busy” is not a state of being and it is not necessary.
We really
can look at our calendars and choose how we will spend our time. We really can
think about what’s important among all of the choices we have and then focus on
those – difficult, but not impossible. I think we would all agree that spending
time with our families is important and that we should make time to be with our
families, but do we always do this?
And then,
I think faith. We say this is important, but are we too busy to pray daily or
to meditate and draw closer to God? Are we too busy to study scripture or to do
some reading that causes us to reflect on the things of the Spirit? Are we too
busy to make regular Sunday worship a habit?
Or what
about church? Much of current literature describes church as a series of
optional activities that must compete with a host of others for attention in
our ‘busy’ lives. Naomi Nye’s statement makes me wonder. Is this really so? Or
might we make ‘church’ the priority that gives meaning and hope to our lives?
Or are we “just too busy”?
I’ve
decided to take her advice and eliminate “busy” from my vocabulary as one of a
number of “useless words”. I am already finding that this is making me more
intentional about the choices I make about events to attend, people to spend
time with, work projects to tackle, visits or calls to make. What might happen
in your life if you do the same? (Especially as the “Busy” holiday season
approaches) Are there other words in your life that you need to eliminate?
