There is a wonderful old song by Bing Crosby et al that expresses the joy of being busy doing nothing:
We’re busy doing nothing, working the whole day through, trying to find lots of things not to do…we’d like to be unhappy but – we never do have the time.”
The song is ridiculous but it makes me laugh (and reminds my of my now departed favourite radio show). But how wonderful would it be to have times during the day when we were indeed just that:
…busy doing nothing
Busy doing nothing – the original idea of the I’m Not Busy campaign was to spend between 10 and 30 minutes every day doing absolutely nothing. For 40 days.
Imagine.
A real challenge, and much more difficult and transformative than you could imagine.
This is about understanding what is most important to us, and how we prioritise that accordingly. What are the rocks in the jar for us, and how proactive are we at putting them into our week first?
Because for me, this is the crux: one of those rocks is self-and-soul-care.
There might be some deeper issues at work here. Last week I was musing on our need to be needed as fuel for our busyness.
Busyness can also be a form of armour to avoid looking inside or dealing with something that is more important – a relationship, a family situation or a character flaw in ourselves that is too painful to address.
If I keep on being busy, I can anesthetise myself to how I am really feeling, and pretend that everything is OK.
This was me for many years. Just get on with it, keep busy, make sure there is no time to stop and actually acknowledge your feelings and – worst of all – your own needs. I can tell you from my own experience that this approach works for a certain time and but ultimately leads to a crash-and-burn situation. You can read more about my own story in relation to the depression in our lives in my Black Dog series.
But we do all have needs, and learning to identify them and take appropriate care of them is important.
Being busy doing nothing may seem like a dream. But it is really about taking time to recharge because we are busy, not when we have time – there will never be time. We need to recharge to sustain the life that we choose to live. We need to learn to value ourselves, and see that time doing nothing – recharging our emotional, spiritual and mental energy – is crucial to our well being.
I have spoken about this here a lot – this idea of soul care.
But – I guess like you? – I am slow to learn, and need to remind myself of the need to sometimes be busy doing nothing. In a restorative way.
As I think about how I want to be perceived by others, especially those closest to me, I am increasingly aware of the importance of being grateful and present to them (see two weeks ago). And of modelling the idea of appropriate self-care. For my nearest-and-dearest seeing me doing things for me that are restorative and enjoyable because I need that in my life.
Perhaps this week you can take some time to be busy doing nothing. If you need some inspiration, I leave you with Bing and his friends: