What are you giving up for Lent?

Lent begins today. Traditionally, a season of preparation and reflection in the Christian calendar leading up to Easter, symbolised by fasting, prayer and giving. But whatever your faith basis, the idea of giving something up for Lent is a popular one. A food item remains a top choice, along with some form of technology, plus vice-like habits including smoking and alcohol.

According to recent research charting Twitter trends, the most common abstentions include Social networking, alcohol, Twitter itself (something of an irony there….), meat and chocolate.

What if we took a more radical approach? It was a Canon at Durham Cathedral called Stephen Cherry who, back in 2012, wrote a book called Beyond Busyness as an introduction to the concept of time wisdom:

seeking to balance the desire for efficiency and effectiveness with the need for personal enrichment and well-being”

He sought to address the catastrophic disease sweeping our lives
called busyness and what it might look like if we chose the disciplines of Lent as a time to refocus our energies and priorities.

His idea – giving up busyness for Lent

…launched in 2014 with the “I’m not busy” campaign.

Some of the fairly harsh reality checks listed on the site as the evils of busyness include – it’s an excuse for being late/rude/not getting things done; it is addictive; it leads to burnout; it distorts your perception.

This last one really caught my attention.

Before you start shouting at your screen about how utterly unrealistic it is to give up busyness in our first world, 21st century lives, hear me out.

Because this is a question of perception. Yes we do all lead very full lives, often with many external demands on us. And we can never stop or slow down time. But we can change the way we see and use time, and potentially learn to steward it better.

A quick look at some definitions to flesh this idea out a bit. Busyness as defined by the Oxford English Dictionary:

The state or condition of having a great deal to do.

More intriguing – and more potentially attention grabbing – are some of the synonyms listed for busy in an online thesaurus:

unavailable, buried, tied up, overloaded, swamped, snowed

And the antonyms: idle, inactive, unoccupied, lazy, quiet, unbusy, unengaged.

Interestingly, some of these are quite negative – do we somehow fear being seen to be less of a person if we are not busy, for fear of being branded idle or lazy? Of course, this is ludicrous…but perhaps take a moment for some short, sharp internal questioning. What keeps you busy? What do you stand to gain from being busy all the time? And how well is it serving you in terms of life satisfaction and fulfillment?

I believe that this epidemic of busyness robs us of the present. For this next week, make note of how often you say you are busy, and in what context. What are the circumstances, and what are you feeling at the time? How often is it the case that when we start to pay attention to something that is becoming a problem in our lives, we suddenly realise it’s enormity and potential power over us. Before, we might not have given it such attention, or even possibly been in denial about it.

Lent can be a great opportunity to stop and take stock, do a little self reflection. What might we be giving up for Lent? I want to explore what it might mean to give up an attitude of busyness, and some realistic alternatives.

I hope you will join me.