Catching My Breath

One of the important tasks of 1978

Friends ask me sometimes if I’m “caught up.”

The question leaves me groping for the right words. People who ask that question must speak a language — live a life — so foreign to me that I can’t come up with an answer. The last time I was “caught up” was probably 1978. That’s not a random date chosen for the purpose of hyperbole, either. I spent 1978 on the road in a 1970 Ford Econoline van, heading nowhere in particular, achieving nothing in particular. Maybe I’ve been over-compensating ever since.

Recently a friend passed on a book by Robert Holden, Happiness Now, which included a list of key points to help readers identify a belief that happiness is earned by how hard we work. Here are a few that apply to me:

• Life is a never-ending “to do” list.
• Exhaustion feels like a weakness and a failure.
• Every moment is full and there’s always more I could be doing.
• “Hurry sickness” is chronic — there’s never enough time to do everything.
• At the end of a work day, it isn’t about living the rest of life; it’s about recovering from work.
• Sleep in on weekends? Forget about it.
• Even on sick days, a little work might be necessary.
• Really great friends, rarely get together.

Okay, so I’m aware. Maybe I’ve even made progress in changing (gosh, I hope so; I think it’s been on one of my to-do lists, or maybe it was one of my annual goals). I know my chronic case of ”hurry sickness” is in remission most of the time, although that is frustrating in itself because it increases my sense that I’ll never have enough time to get it all done. But I also realize that this mindset has been with me so long that being rid of it once and for all may never happen.

So I haven’t deleted my to-do list. What I have experienced, during my Facebook Fast, is an increasing stillness around me. Less noise. Less activity. Less indecision, which I take as a sign of less mind-clutter.  

I still can’t say that I’m caught up. But maybe I’m catching my breath.

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