On Balance and the Unsustainable State of Constant Busyness

Originally published February 2016.

Balance-

1. (n.) An even distribution of weight enabling someone or something to remain upright and steady.

1. (n.) The state of having your weight spread equally so that you do not fall.

Balance and busyness—two words that are extremely difficult to bring into reality in the same moment. The first, a goal that so many of us strive for, yet so often fail to achieve. The second, a state in which so many of us find ourselves constantly trapped.Now busyness in and of itself is not necessarily a negative thing. However, when we are not aware of its effects on our inner self and allow it to prevent balance from existing in our life, it has the potential to become an all-consuming, self-perpetuating state of being that leaves us eternally exhausted. It seems as if once we are slightly busy, we fill up a little more time here and a little more time there until we feel like every second of every day is filled with being just plain busy.

I see the effects of it both in the people surrounding me and in my own life every day. How often it is that when asking someone how they are doing or what they have been up to, we get responses such as:

“Good, just really busy!”

“Things have been crazy lately.”

“I’ve been working a lot.”

“Okay, but I’m so tired.”

“I haven’t been getting enough sleep lately.”

“I’m sorry I haven’t called you back. I just got caught up in my crazy week.”

Why is it that these responses are the norm? Why is it that when asked how we are doing, our answer is rarely, “I’m just feeling really balanced today.”

Why is finding balance so hard?

When we let the grips of busyness take the reign over balance in our lives, we are led forward, trying desperately to keep pouring ourselves out into our communities, but only finding that we have nothing to pour out anymore because we are trying to pour out of an empty cup—something I understand all too well.

Last spring, I found myself in the midst of absolute chaos in every area of my life. I was taking an 18-hour class load, working two jobs, devoting 5+ hours a week to sing and play piano for my campus ministry, sleeping too little, stressing too much, all the while trying to hold on to friendships and relationships that were slipping through my grasp. I was residing in the part of my personality that seems to somehow fill every second of every day with busyness, even when I was intentionally trying to prioritize the alone time and silence that my personality also craved. “ON TIME” is a journal entry from April 2015, in the heart of the hardest and darkest season of my life. Though it does not use the same language of “balance and busyness” that I am using now, it still speaks to from the same tension and thoughts about concept of time that I find resurfacing in my life now in different ways, and I feel that some of you may find yourself identifying with them.

“ON TIME,” APRIL 2015

“I have been so anxious to improve the nick of time, and notch it on my stick too; to stand on the meeting of the two eternities, the past and the future, which is precisely the present moment; to toe that line.” – Henry David Thoreau

“If only I had more time…”

–a thought that I have found surfacing the jumbled sea of my consciousness more and more often with each passing month. Is it ever going to slow down? Is it ever going to stop? Am I ever going to come to a place in my life where the time that my soul and my body long for is in my grasp and free to be used at my leisure? The fact that these questions are even present in my thoughts is only the beginning of the reason as to why I am in such a state of frustration. I hate how being surrounded constantly by a culture that lives as if time is something in which they are trapped—as if time is something that must be conquered or cheated—causes this mentality to slyly trickle into my own mind, leaving me defenseless to its joy-stealing ways. I am surrounded by a culture that will always be seeking new ways to manipulate time, whether it be a new technology that helps us tear down the rainforest faster to yield more crop and therefore yield more money for the business leaders whose eyes are blinded by greed and a desire to own and rule this world, or a new app that allows moms that work 60 hours a week to be able to order their groceries to be ready at the register upon arrival because Taker culture has created this lie that a woman is of no value if she does not out-compete her fellow man, leaving her with not even enough time to spend thirty minutes in the grocery store, or heaven forbid some extra time to build some type of relationship with her two-year-old, who has spent more of its life in daycare than it has spent with its own mother. (I understand that this is making a universal assumption…I do not think that every mother who online shops falls into this category, for I know that it does help moms with infants, disabilities, etc.) But regardless of the specifics and details, so many of the inventions and innovations being introduced into this world have goals that fall under a certain, common theme—

saving time.

Saving time so that more time can be spent working jobs that bring stress and exhaustion instead of fulfillment and happiness.

Saving time so that more time can be spent planning and preparing for the next world war that seems more and more possible with each passing day.

Saving time so that more time can be devoted to getting a little more money to be able to buy a bigger and better truck than the guy next door, resulting in bragging rights over who is destroying our precious atmosphere faster.

Saving time so that more time can be spent eating food that is made in the cheapest and least sustainable way possible that is eating away at the insides of those who ingest it.

Saving time so that more time can be spent in the hospital because of the sickness and disease the habits of this culture are causing.

Saving time so that more time exists for man to increase his reign and ownership of this planet.

Saving time so that more time can be devoted to tearing every organism and life form on the earth apart.

Saving time so that more time can be spent living in a way that will ultimately do nothing but bring man with an ever-increasing speed to his own demise.

I say these things in the mindset that I am separate from them, but am I really any different? I so often live with this viewpoint of time directing every decision I make. I catch myself thinking things like, “How can I get a better workout in a shorter amount of time?” “What can I do to spend the least amount of time on this assignment as possible?” “How can I make this meal faster?” “How can I speed up this appointment?” “How can I get out of this meeting sooner?” “How can I spend more time on ______ and less time on _______?”

It’s always the same.

Who am I to claim that I am any different than those who let time, or lack thereof, dictate what they can or cannot do, instead of letting their hearts and desires dictate what they can and cannot do. I am a full-time student taking 18 hours of classes. I work 20+ hours a week. I spend 5+ hours a week playing piano in a band of which I barely feel a part. I’m 20 years old and I spend no more than 5 hours per week awake in my own house. I don’t have time to exercise enough. I don’t have time to cook unless I do it in the hours that I should be sleeping and letting my body recuperate. I don’t have time to spend with my friends. I don’t have time to even sit for fifteen minutes and ask the three girls I live with how they are doing. I don’t have time to read. I don’t have time to journal and unload the heavy thoughts that have been weighing down my spirit for the past six months. I sacrifice sleep for schoolwork. I don’t have time to call my mom, my dad, my brother who needs his older sister to call out the greatness in him, my grandfather and grandmother whose days on this earth are running out, my best friend who is hurting and mourning the death of her father…

I am such a hypocrite.

Tears of anger, frustration, sadness, hurt, and loneliness show their faces as all of those words truly sink in. I spend all of my time doing the things that this culture tells me I have to, and leave myself with a common theme of no time to do anything that I know truly makes me happy, no time to spend engaging in the lifestyle that I claim to want because I am trapped in the lifestyle that I claim to hate.

Trapped.

Trapped is exactly what I feel, but not because I am physically trapped by a closed door or an impossible decision. Every door imaginable is freely open for me to enter into at my leisure. I do not know what element of my life is making me feel trapped right now. I think I feel trapped in working too much because I am being robbed of my money in order to get the education that I desire, so I feel that I have to make up for it by working enough to pay for my rent/food/gas so that my parents don’t have to. I don’t feel trapped by my pursuit of education alone, for I genuinely desire the education of what I care about—nutrition, sustainability, and exercise, –but I do feel trapped by the fact that I am forced to take classes which have no significance at all in my life but still must be paid for and suffered through in order to “expand my world view” and “make me a more well-rounded candidate in the professional world.” I feel like so many students just take what they are told about anything, whether it be a philosophical viewpoint, economic/political policy/decision or a reason/explanation of a certain process as ultimate truth or the one right way, and they never take a second to even consider the possibility that there could be another way. It is discouraging to look at the generation who is next in line to change this dark world and see nothing but mindless robots who are perfectly content with leaving their settings on autopilot for the rest of their lives, with Mother Culture’s lullabies whispering endlessly, sending them deeper and deeper into the blackness of the Taker coma, until they, along with the rest of the living things on this planet, are face to face with death, with absolutely nothing to say for themselves.”

I understand that the tone of this journal entry is angry and heavy, but it was only a reflection of the heaviness that I felt in my spirit as my busyness and over-commitment was sucking every ounce of life out of me. I did feel trapped in my busyness because I did not know how to cut back. I felt helpless in trying to figure out where to even start to cut back. I had been buying into the system of how I was expected to live for so long that I literally could not imagine anything different.

Do you feel like you are trying to pour out of an empty cup? Do you find yourself feeling as if you are constantly trying to “catch up,” whether it be catching up on sleep, catching up with your family, catching up on your favorite podcast series, catching up with a friend you’ve been trying to meet with for three weeks but just can’t seem to find the time, catching up on meal prep, catching up on exercise by cramming every workout you skipped in the past month into one day, catching up your budget to account for your recent shopping spree that you went on to cope with the stress of your busyness.

We cannot live in this state of constantly trying to “catch up.” It leaves us tense, frustrated, and feeling like we are never good enough because there is always something that we are lacking. Regardless of how many thousands of things in which we find ourselves involved over the course of the week, we still find that there are things that we do not do “enough.”

We look in the mirror and see nothing but someone who is desperately trying but seems to never be good enough.

We are created to be busy people. Busyness is natural to fall into, and it can be such a good thing, but we are not created to be busy people doing things that we hate while constantly trying to “catch up” to be able to do the things we love. It is unsustainable. Something has to change. Something has to be cut back. Fairly often the thing that must be cut back is not even a negative thing in our lives. However, if we are trying to pour energy that we do not have into a situation/community/meeting/club/job/hobby/relationship then we are only setting ourselves up for more exhaustion, more frustration, more self-hatred, because we have failed to rise up to the person we strive to be yet again.

I have started the practice of making my “cup” from which I pour my energy out out an actual physical thing that I picture in my mind. It is a simple ceramic mug with a forest green glaze with a tree silhouette in the middle (because trees are my favorite and if I were any species of vegetation I would definitely be a tree). In it I only have a certain amount of liquid social, mental, emotional, spiritual, and physical energy that can be poured out, and throughout every day of the week, and I try to make myself aware of what is being poured from my cup in every situation. This has helped me become aware of where I am pouring out, but it has also helped me become aware of where I get filled up again. It is this balance that is so crucial in our lives, and it is this balance that makes our busyness worth it and sustainable. It is a process of give-and-take, but we must become more self-aware in order to get better at that process and help ourselves live healthier lives. Of course I get distracted and sometimes look in my cup and realize “Oh no I have negative liquid social energy left in my cup” so I know that introvert me does not need to interact with any large group of humans until I have time to go for a walk in the woods by myself or read Les Mis for a couple hours while drinking my tea in my room or anything else that fills my cup with liquid social energy again.

To continue the analogy, some of you may be thinking, “Okay Em, yes I understand…liquid energies and balance and paying attention to our cups… but how do I know when I am running out of a particular energy?”

That is a good question, and I think that looks different for every person. For me, I know that I am running out of mental energy when I am trying to read my book on psychology and read ten pages of my book only to realize I haven’t processed a single word of it, so I know that I need to take a break for a day or two and just read an easy novel. Obviously it is harder for those of you who are in school and have deadlines to meet, but filling mental energy back up can be done by a simple break, whether it be going for a walk in between studying or when you get to a point where the paper you are writing becomes a rambling mess of kindergarten-level words, press pause and let your mind be wrapped up in the simplicity of drawing or coloring or cooking or listening to music or whatever else brings rest to your mind.

We create best when our minds are at ease and energized.

Some cues to the decrease in certain energy levels are a little more subtle and take time to recognize them for what they are, and they can also seem completely unrelated. For example, I am not normally an anxious person, but I have found that the few times I do tend to become anxious are when I am drained emotionally or drained spiritually, so I know that any time I feel anxiety knocking on the door of my chest, I first ask myself if the reason has anything to do with emotion or my spiritual life. I think being drained of a particular energy could manifest in a variety of ways, whether it be anxiety, stress, irritability, depression, etc. It just takes some time of paying attention to the emotions you feel and asking yourself why you are feeling them.

Another aspect of busyness that I want to briefly touch on is the importance of avoiding using our busyness as a way to numb ourselves to feelings that we want to distract ourselves from because we do not want to deal with them. This is coming from the queen of pushing emotions down through the distraction of keeping busy, so I am not pointing fingers or speaking in a condescending tone. I know how easy it is to use busyness as a medicine to numb yourself when you are in a hard season, but it is so unhealthy and detrimental to the healing process. So I ask, are you using your busyness as a distraction or numbing emotion to keep you from parts of yourself that you do not want to bring out? If so, I beg you to stop, for I know first hand that the road will be much longer for you if you continue to use busyness to build a wall around your heart.

We have to be careful not to let our cups run dry in any area of our life, for once one area runs dry and we continue to try to pour out in that area, we only draw energy from other areas of our life. Then some of us, myself included, will continue to do this until one day we look in our cup and realize that there is no social, mental, emotional, spiritual, or physical energy in our cup anymore, and it is this danger that I want to help you prevent.

Are you consumed in your busyness?

Do you feel balanced?

Do you feel upright and steady,

or do you feel like you are constantly falling?

If busy is the only description you can find of your life right now, and balance is a foreign concept, CUT BACK. I know it’s scary and there are a million excuses of why you should keep trying, but your attempts at investment in anything are not worth it if you are sacrificing your mental and emotional sanity and cannot bring your full self to the table. Your community wants your full self, and if becoming your full self again means cutting something back, then do it! There is no shame in being open and honest that you need a break to be healthy again.

We were created to live in a state of fullness and life,

not in a state of emptiness and death.

I pray that we continue to try to find balance in life. It keeps us upright and steady so that we can bring whatever fire that has been placed in our hearts into a cold world that desperately needs it.

It is an even distribution of weight—socially, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and physically—so that we can continue to bring a full cup to the table to pour out from.

It is spreading the weight that this world places on your shoulders equally, so that you can walk forward, with your head held high, and know that you will not fall.

Cheers to the journey, and may your Spirit always reside in a state of wonder