Last week, I'd decided I was too busy to compose this month's column, or rant.
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I decided to give in to the media, and believe that being a part of the modern world meant being constantly too busy, too stressed out with the demands of life.
When did being busy morph into being harassed and frantic? When did we lose control over our schedules, and lives? Our culture teaches us that idleness and laziness are both evils, and totally unacceptable. I agree. However, being occupied gainfully and constructively is not the same as being busy, and being busy is not the same as being under pressure. As a society we seem so afraid of idleness that activity, any activity, is a necessity. Somewhere, within living memory, we are no longer spinning the wheel, it is spinning us, and the journey is making us all sick and giddy.
We are constantly told how busy our lives are, and then introduced to something that will make our lives easier, or give us more leisure time. We are also being told we need to be able to "do it all" and, thrown into this mix, the pace of our lives is being set unreasonably high by machines. No wonder the wheel of life is out of control. Memes are fast, and we are being expected to keep up.
All around I see exhausted faces, and stress from day to day living does seem to be a larger issue now than 30 years ago. Statistics do seem to support that as a population we are getting less sleep, less exercise and spending less time with family and friends. Almost no-one has time to spare to volunteer ... so what are we doing with our time?
On my first visit to Japan, I was exposed to a community of folk born before or during World War I. In their 70s and 80s, these spry and active Japanese introduced me to a world that has since vanished. It was considered crude to rush or run. This was a sign not of being busy, but of being unorganised and hasty. A retired house builder loved telling me how building a house would take much time, much planning, but would be done thoroughly, and well. It was believed that if the builder wasn't relaxed, the end result would not be good.
Somewhere along the line, we all got so caught up in having to do it all that life, even with all its time and labour-saving devices, has become frantic. Sometimes I see panic in people's eyes when they are without their phones, or whatever devices are used to keep up with their peers. We have reached a point where we seem to be chasing our tales to keep up with each other, at the expense of doing things properly.
I have a nature that falls too easily into the trap of trying to do it all. In today's climate, I am my own worst enemy.
I keep being promised more leisure time by engaging modern conveniences, but, like millions of others, am left asking where is all this free time I've been promised?
My parents and grandparents always taught, by example, that rather than complain about something, try to find a solution. This problem of the frantic pace of modern life, is very difficult to tackle. Just being a part of society makes us affected by it, whether we want to or not.
Last night, rather than spend time on social media reading about the antics of some famous person I've never heard of, or the rantings of a Facebook friend I've never met, I went to bed early. This enabled me to rise early this morning and get this column written. Looks like I wasn't so busy after all.