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 family neighborhood. 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: “My daughter 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?
Whatever happened to a world in which kids get muddy, get dirty, get messy, and heavens, get bored?
Do we have to love our children so much that we overschedule them, making them stressed and busy — just like us?
What happened to a world in which we can sit with the people we love and have slow conversations about the state of our heart and soul, conversations that slowly unfold, conversations with pregnant pauses and silences that we are in no rush to fill?
How did we create a world in which we have more and more to do with less time for leisure, less time for reflection, less time for community, less time to just… be?
Somewhere we read, “The unexamined life is not worth living… for a human.” How are we supposed to live, to examine, to be, to become fully human when we are so busy?
This disease of being “busy” , when we are never at ease is spiritually destructive to our health and wellbeing. It saps our ability to be fully present with those we love the most in our families, and keeps us from forming the kind of community that we all so desperately crave.
Since the 1950s, we have had so many new technological innovations that we thought (or were promised) would make our lives easier, faster, simpler. Yet, we have no more “free” or leisurely time today than we did decades ago.
For some of us, the “privileged” ones, the lines between work and home have become blurred. We are on our devices. All the Freaking Time.
Smart phones and laptops mean that there is no division between the office and home. When the kids are in bed, we are back online.
One of my own daily struggles is the avalanche of email. I often refer to it as my jihad against email.
I am constantly buried under hundreds and hundreds of emails, and I have absolutely no idea how to make it stop. I’ve tried different techniques: only responding in the evenings, not responding over weekends, asking people to schedule more face-to-face time. They keep on coming, in volumes that are unfathomable: personal emails, business emails, hybrid emails.
And people expect a response — right now (Not correct). I, too, it turns out… am so busy.
The reality looks very different for others.
For many, working two jobs in low-paying sectors is the only way to keep the family afloat.
Twenty percent of our children are living in poverty, and too many of our parents are working minimum wage jobs just to put a roof over their head and something resembling food on the table. We are so busy.
The old models, including that of a nuclear family with one parent working outside the home (if it ever existed), have passed away for most of us. We now have a majority of families being single families, or where both parents are working outside the home. It is not working.
It doesn’t have to be this way.
In many Muslim cultures, when you want to ask them how they’re doing, you ask in Arabic, Kayf haalak? or, in Persian, Haal-e shomaa chetoreh? How is your 7aal?
What is this haal that you inquire about?
It is the transient state of one’s heart. In reality, we ask, “How is your heart doing at this very moment, at this breath?” When I ask, “How are you?” that is really what I want to know.
I am not asking how many items are on your to-do list, nor asking how many items are in your inbox. I want to know how your heart is doing, at this very moment.
Tell me. Tell me your heart is joyous, tell me your heart is aching, tell me your heart is sad, tell me your heart craves a human touch.
Examine your own heart, explore your soul, and then tell me something about your heart and your soul.
Tell me you remember you are still a human being, not just a human doing.
Tell me you’re more than just a machine, checking off items from your to-do list. Have that conversation, that glance, that touch.
Be a healing conversation, one filled with grace and presence.
Put your hand on my arm, look me in the eye, and connect with me for one second.
Tell me something about your heart, and awaken my heart. Help me remember that I too am a full and complete human being, a human being who also craves a human touch.
I teach at a university where many students pride themselves on the “study hard, party hard” lifestyle. This might be a reflection of many of our lifestyles and our busy-ness — that even our means of relaxation is itself a reflection of that same world of overstimulation.
Our relaxation often takes the form of action-filled (yet mindless) films, or violent and face-paced sports.
I don’t have any magical solutions. All I know is that we are losing the ability to live a truly human life.
We need a different relationship to work, to technology.
We know what we want: a meaningful life, a sense of community, a balanced existence.
It’s not just about “leaning in” or faster iPhones. We want to be truly human.
“It takes more courage to examine the dark corners of your own soul than it does for a soldier to fight on a battlefield.”
How exactly are we supposed to examine the dark corners of our soul when we are so busy?
How are we supposed to live the examined life?
I am always a prisoner of hope, but I wonder if we are willing to have the structural conversation necessary about how to do that, how to live like that. Somehow we need a different model of organizing our lives, our societies, our families, our communities.
I want my kids to be dirty, messy, even bored — learning to become human.
I want us to have a kind of existence where we can pause, look each other in the eye, touch one another, and inquire together: Here is how my heart is doing? I am taking the time to reflect on my own existence; I am in touch enough with my own heart and soul to know how I fare, and I know how to express the state of my heart.
How is the state of your heart today?
Let us insist on a type of human-to-human connection where when one of us responds by saying, “I am just so busy,” we can follow up by saying, “I know, love. We all are. But I want to know how your heart is doing.”
Note: Even in retirement people need to feel totally busy. Many feel happy when retirement age is extended. That is why getting bed ridden is the end of the world.
Adonis Diaries 
Titbits # 110
Posted by: adonis49 on: March 7, 2021
Titbits # 110
The night is much longer than the day. Not just in duration but in exhaustion. Trying to sleep and waking up frequently and filling the void. By day break, you feel that you had done all your mental work
The results are there: People vaccinated with Pfizer can contaminate people in contact with them. Worse, the mutant virus target babies of less than 2 years and pregnant women and is more deadly.
Israel turned a mass lab. for Pfizer vaccine. While the cases in Jordan and Gaza are dropping drastically and fast, the cases doubled in Israel and the mutant virus is more deadly.
Israel locked completely its borders: No one is to go out so that the outside nations fail to discover the new deadly mutant virus harvesting the Israeli society. The election is within a month, but the secret is out and the dailies are confronting this “deadly propaganda decision” of Netanyahu.
US regulators approved the first rapid at-home coronavirus test. It has been developed by California-based Lucira Health, and can be completed from start to finish in one location and in only 30 minutes, without requiring an external laboratory to analyze samples. (I don’t trust anymore US health regulators)
Gizadeathstar.com: “The bottom line is: we’re still looking at the same Deep State, the same factions, the same players, and the same playbooks. Mafia, CIA, military, and “Texas oil interests”, meaning the Hunts, the Murchisons, and – yes – the Bush family. And we’re still looking at a banana republic… with Nukes” 57 […]
US/colonial powers commit the assassinations and Israel get free propaganda for her Mossad. Paid mercenaries (Israelis) have to pay the consequences.
Oh Palestinians, Jordanians, Lebanese, Syrians, Iraqis: You should Not cow down to the colonial powers directives that you are living on individual Islands and have to fend individually by yourselves. You are one nation, one people and you have got to think, feel and act accordingly. One for all and all for one against the forces that want you isolated, weak and taken apart in our existential future. Any pre-emptive war on one of the “created” State must be confronted as targeting the entire people in all the other States
The democratic process, allowing the base to vote, has the advantage to open up freedom of opinions, debates and a wider communication among the members. The trustee system (Senate, representative chambers, majles Oumanaa2) might look good logically because of a gathering of educated and experienced members, and might be the best alternative at the beginning, but it usually becomes obsolete to the base and inevitably leads to dictatorship of a certain political class of elders with vested interests.
It is impossible to contemplate the Zionists and US extremist Protestants (Neo Conservatives) still living under this heap of crap of fake knowledge, myths and racist ideology. Israel is surviving under this mound of shit and States are forbidden to publicly criticize Israel apartheid policies .
When those States drop “La Ilaha illa Allah” or “Allah Akbar” from their flags, when they drop from their Constitutions that Shari3at is the foundation of the laws, when they drop that a religious sect is the religion of the State, when they drop the concept that women’ brain is half that of men…Then, you may ask me “How do you foresee the future for these people?”
French colonialism did the most harm to the people in the Near-East. French institutions have been suckering to Zionist movements since 1870 and preempting apartheid Israel demands all the way.
All billionaires have shares in pharmaceutical companies, in oil companies, in chemical companies… What is worrying is that, eventually, most future vaccines (covid-19 and others) will be laced with 5G microchips to control and monitor world population by the superpowers. Mind you that Taiwan is the main manufacturer of those microchips.
Do you trust covid-19 vaccine? I don’t. Especially when they force it on you. and more horrifying, when the pharmaceutical companies are liability-free if you die or are maimed…(The PERP ACT of Trump administration)
How the “terrorist” activities are processed and conducted? US/colonial powers fund the “terrorist/mercenary” training camps in an “underdeveloped” country. A high officer in the internal security service of a third country (Pakistan for example) manages and run the execution of the activity. If an activity fails or the main officers are uncovered, they are exterminated in order Not to leave evidences. Former Pakistan dictator General Musharraf said: “These are Not terrorist movements, they can be considered as armed NGO”
For every religion, there is a sect that could resolve many difficulties in working out a taxonomy in beliefs. They are the sects/tribes living close to urban surrounding and fertile zones; and yet they adopt nomadic characteristics and have acquired flexible line of thinking, especially abstract concepts
An unexamined life is Not worth living. And after being examined, it turns out Not to be such a bargain
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