Busyness
Sunday, August 9th, 2009I need a mission statement for this blog, all of the sudden. Having an online journal as a confidant is self-defeating, although this has rarely been that.
I confess that, less than a day after my arrival in the suburbs of Chicago, I am struck by a sense of impending busyness.
My mother-in-law (Hi, Mama Eggert) suggested the busyness would numb my acute sense of loss (loss of mountains, of enormous trees and un-manicured hills). My father-in-law (Hello, Papa Eggert) echoed, with just a little doom, how busy things can be.
My friend (Fish - pants) foreshadowed the various ways my life (and Marcy’s and Amelia’s) will become busy.
I was glad to be driving around on a Sunday, rather than rush hour on a weekday.
Certainly there is a line of people before me asking this, but why is it that anyone wants to be so busy?
Leaving the direct answer to that question aside, I think a lot of people would answer that, whether you actually want it or not, life simply is busy. There are jobs, there’s school, there are kids in dance classes and on baseball teams, and there are chores to do and family gatherings to attend. Am I forgetting something?
Mama Eggert is a virtual marvel. Marcy tells me things that sound like legends: She cleans the house at an astonishing frequency, keeps up her work as a nurse, runs about for her children (she’ll be back and forth to St. Louis quite a bit in the coming years), shops with an enviable eye for discounts and deals, cooks for a family party she’s hosting - and then she’s cleaning again.
If something has to give, I don’t know what it is. I do know a good number of people who don’t do much of anything - to be in their presence is to enter a kind of psychic Jell-O mold. I’ve often felt that way about nursing homes. Anything approaching sloth has no appeal for me.
You may already be saying to yourself that moderation is obviously the key. Or balance - maybe exceptional busyness here, and a slower pace there, like contrasting summer to winter. A friend (Hi, Russ) used to joke about going into hibernation during the winter, while living at Bethlehem Farm. I can’t tell you how appealing that was to me, to balance the intensely busy summer months with a period of deep rest.
One of my great joys in West Virginia (pre-Amelia) was the opportunity to do anything, or nothing, on Sundays. Wake up a little later, eat a leisurely breakfast, mow the lawn for a while, come in and play MarioKart, mow the lawn some more, go run, read a book, nap, fold laundry, enjoy dinner and a movie with Marcy.
The basis of the opinion that busyness is unavoidable, ultimately, is that reality is such that we must perform certain tasks, and be present in certain places (at PRECISE times) in order to make the world go round. But it sometimes seems like a log going round in the water, and you must keep running only because the decision to stop would leave you all wet.
Then again, swimming is a wonderful recreational activity.