I Promise You: I Am Never Busy

25 Jul I Promise You: I Am Never Busy

I promise you: I am never busy. Like this chipmunk, I am alert and graceful and strong, using what look like rocky pressures to others as supports I balance on. Image by pocaagua.

I Am Never Busy

I was in a meeting recently where one person said, compassionately, “I know we’re all busy people,” and there were a whole unspoken list of things this meant about what we had accomplished on the topic, what we could expect to accomplish, and what we could hold ourselves accountable to doing. (Nothing, on all counts.)

I promise you: I am never busy, ever.

I had not accomplished anything, did not plan to accomplish anything, and was not accountable to doing anything because I had chosen to bide my time and listen to the others before contributing. (That was my role.)

It was perfectly appropriate for me to have accomplished nothing. I had no guilt. It had nothing to do with my being busy.

Speaking Up

I did not speak up in the meeting. I did not want to be rude by saying, “I am never busy.” What if the others did not understand?

But I do feel you will, and that you will take inspiration and understand yourself better from this post.

Speaking Out Against Busyness

Not being busy is my brand.Is it yours?

Speaking out against culturally engrained, reinforced, and assumed busyness is part of RAISING CLARITY. Here are some posts where we have spoken out previously:

• • The Basic RAISING CLARITY Blog Post on Time: The Wealth of Time.
  • Wealth is Where We Are: The title is a pun. You’ll see. You were born abundant, wealthy–not busy. This is also the post with the great Gandhi quote about having such a busy day ahead of him that he had to meditate for two hours instead of only one.
  • Refusing busyness can require bravery: Feel Your Wealth and Make Space for What Matters.

I Refuse to Be “Busy” (But I May Be a Pain in the Butt)

I may be stressed-out, confused, angry, and moving too fast. But that doesn’t make me “busy!” It just makes me feel awful and be awful to deal with. It just makes me: stressed-out, confused, angry, or moving too fast.

There’s nothing that makes me more important because I do this. (And there’s nothing that makes other people important when they do it. So there. You can quote me.)

Busy? Here’s What’s Really Going On

When I feel “busy” what I’m really feeling is…

• • Scared
  • Anxious
  • Angry
  • Spaced Out
  • Indifferent
  • Uncertain
  • Uninterested
  • Ugly
  • Unpleasant
  • Unhappy
  • Focused Elsewhere
  • Wishing Someone Else Would Say “No” For Me

It’s important for me (for you) to take care of those feelings. To pay attention to them. To address them, to ‘fess up to them, to think about what they mean about the choices I am making. And make other choices.

So much is covered up and covered over when we say we are busy.

When I Refuse to Be Busy, Here’s What I Am Refusing

I promise you: I am never busy, because I refuse:

• • My ego’s needs to be perceived as important
  • My ego’s thirst to BE important (the inner self who has bought into the culture of busyness)
  • The culture of busyness that says when we are busy we are important
  • The relentless monetizing of everything–turning everything into what it costs, or what it pays, even things like reducing deaths from air pollution (note this is an automatic PDF download) and dumping toxic waste
  • Capitalism’s hold on me personally
  • The mindlessness assumption that:
    • busy is good
    • busy is better
    • we are all very busy
    • we have to rush around being busy instead of thinking carefully
    • action is better than reflection
    • doing is better than
      • caring
      • sitting
      • enjoying
      • contemplating, and
      • thought-experimenting with action in a way that saves you time, money, agony and can also be very enjoyable.

Join me if you feel as I do! Contact me if you want my help!