Time and Space...

How are you?

I'll bet you're fine. Good. Busy. Or all three. They're our standard responses after all.

Maybe you're just scraping in at 'kinda fine' today; but you'll correct that to 'good' because being anything less might make people want to delve a little deeper. And you don't much want that happening. You know - because of the busy. We're all so busy.

And while it's OK to give a quick wave and a nod and a 'How are you going?' as you open the double-locked-child-proof gate juggling a lunch box, stuffed lizard and a child moving at approximately 4cm an hour in plastic dress up heels, you don't actually want to talk. Not really.

You want to thrust your child inside so you can race off to what you're already late for; or get started on all the things you need to do whilst this particular charge isn't in yours.

Plus, conversations are, I think we're getting wise to these days, dangerous things. They mess with our schedules and they mess with our minds...

I have always been busy. I played for every team at school and did swimming, drama stuff and dance classes outside of it. I took hours to do all my homework to annoyingly fountain-penned perfection. I had a 'planner' and I scheduled things and I met deadlines. I had three almost-overlapping part-time jobs on the go at the same time one summer and I cannot remember once, even as a child, when I spent any holidays 'at leisure'. Summer was for summer camps and dance workshops and dusting the shelves that house the fabric sample books at Mum's work.

I don't do, if I can help it, spontaneity of any kind. I can't. I'm too busy and I always have been.

How I ended up married to the most ad hoc, haphazard, lover of impromptu adventures is a mystery almost as great as the fact that, despite far less exposure time to him, he has somehow trained both children to be exactly the same. I do wonder here if this may be less of a mystery and more of a good old joke by the Universe to be honest.

Even these days, with no official place I have to show up to work and the fairly cushy title of Stay-at-home-mum, I manage to entirely fill my days up weeks in advance. Between gym classes and tutoring and playdates and Mermaids and Astronauts stuff and writing and Arbonne stuff and post office runs and product deliveries and Bette's appointments and helping at school and reiki sessions and planning Easter Egg hunts and Birthday parties and decorating things and tidying up (oh, the tidying up) I can easily fill every single speck of time I have from dawn until dusk.

With all the things and the planning and organising for the things, I am a Busy Person. And I have, until recently, worn my busy like a pin of honour. Busy People after all, Get Shit Done.

Busy People are not lazy. Busy People are go getters. Busy People are important. Busy People are (we assume) successful. Busy People are in demand. But actually... Busy People are dicks.

Busy people do not, literally or metaphorically, stop to smell the roses and all too often, in that, manage to sweep others into not stopping to smell the roses either. Most notably, their better adjusted partners whom they provide lists of things to do for - since they clearly don't have enough because they're not doing things. Or their heel dragging, butterfly chasing kids that threaten to make them late.

So I'm wondering if we need to change the narrative on busy and knock it down a peg or two from where we've mistakenly placed it.

Because busy halts unconsidered adventures from unfolding as the universe tries to gift them to us.

Busy stops us really connecting to others and keeps us alone. Busy prevents us from looking inside and also beyond.

Busy makes our hearts race, our trips to Dan Murphy's more frequent and our friends feel neglected.

Busy, I am starting to realise, is nothing more than a flimsy shield to stop us really engaging with life, with ourselves and with other people.

Busy is a mask and a shortcoming. Not a success story.

We all have the same 24 hours in a day. Why are some of us so crap at finding even minutes within them for ourselves or the things that really, truly, matter?

My busy, in part, has often stemmed from the story that I tell myself about how I can't properly 'relax' or switch off until all the things are done. Until the laundry basket is empty and the house is tidy and the dog is fed and the emails are answered and the orders are put in. Until my ducks are in a row, ship shape, their orange webbed feet shining to polished perfection.

But, I'm starting to wonder, particularly since becoming a parent because the to do list is endless, if this is really the true story.

After all, we all know that everything is never actually done don't we? There's always more to do. Windows to clean, desks to tidy, journals to fill in, wardrobes to sort out, proposals to better write, lessons to better plan...tea towels to iron.

I could keep myself busy from now until I'm 104 even if I slept for only 3 hours a night. We all could. We often choose to. So what's really going on? Why, typically, aren't we good at stopping?

Why do we overcommit and fill our free time learning how to make jam or shuttle kids about dropping them at martial arts and dance and football and birthday parties. Why do we stuff our days to the brim with things we feel we must do?

It can't JUST be because of the prestige we associate with busy-ness.

And I don't think it can be simply because of the fact we live in a world that has become so totally and utterly materialistic we tend to try to take on as much paid work as we can in order to get all the 'things' we desire. Or more stressfully even, these days, to simply stay afloat financially. Because, the thing is, even with a 40 hour working week and 8 hours sleep a night, there's another 72 hours left most of us will mange to fill up with total ease every single week.

I think there's something more going on and I think it's to do with our aversion to finding space.

Space to ponder, connect, reconnect, evaluate and explore. If we don't leave any space, we can be in control of everything... even if, somewhat paradoxically, it might feel like we're at the mercy of our scheduling all the time. After all, at least we were the ones that made the schedule.

When we're still and quiet (unless we're just utterly exhausted from all the busy) too much goes on internally. Too much externally is allowed to unfold.

Time, connection and space hold little value in our throwaway world of besties who've never met IRL but who mutually adore the curated images and edited comments on one another's feeds. Having a soaring career, 11 kids in cute coordinated outfits, a black belt in Jiujitsu and a perfect manicure; they do. Things we can label and measure and certificate. Things that place us abstractly as 'better than' or some how 'more' than the next person.

That you went for a swim in the sea today with a friend you bumped into at the coffee shop or lost an hour searching for snails with a 4 year old just seem to place you as kinda slack. Didn't you have anything better (or more important) to do after all?

That you meditated or spoke to an old man at the bus stop until you had to go back to do pick up rather than doing anything else all day, place you as a little odd. Definitely not important, because, look at all the free time you have to do that shit. Someone important would be needed elsewhere. By an employer perhaps. A partner. A family member.

And, in the swim and the chats and the snail hunting & the meditation - space and quiet and connection were given a spot to flourish. With ourselves and with others. And fuck, they're scary. So scary, that as a society, we seem to have relegated their worth and value to almost nothing and labelled every generation's truth seekers in as derogatory terms as possible. Hippies, beatniks, bohemians, flower children... dropouts, failures.

But, what if space and quiet and connection are the point and not the bottom of the laundry basket and the fact you own 9 pairs of Louboutins?

I think I'm ready to give up some of the busy and see.

See who I actually am if I strip away all the things I do - which I've previously thought of as my identity. See who I can connect with and grow with and what adventures each day might hold if I leave even just a tiny spot for them.

So, I'm not super busy anymore guys. If you want me, stop by. And if I'm not here, come & join me in whatever situation stopping and standing still has sent. It'll be slow-paced and seemingly-superfluous but it might be exactly the spot you're meant to see too.