The Disease of Busyness

As a Nurse Practitioner, I am around people all day long five days a week.  Every ten to thirty minutes, I see a different face, hear a different story, create a different plan.  Recently a theme throughout many of my visits is busyness.  People are busy.  Too busy to follow a healthy diet.  Too busy to exercise for 30 minutes.  Too busy to take their medications.  Too busy to see a marriage counselor.  The list goes on and on...  And you know what?  I believe them.  Many of my patients feel busy because they are busy - They work jobs, take care of their sick parents, have a spouse, coach their child's sports team, try to put food on the table, pay their bills.  At the end of the day, there is not much time to allocate toward their own health.  I am not only speaking of physical health, but this busyness also affects emotional and spiritual health.

There are times when I see this same busyness in my own life.   My personal busyness comes from several commitments, like the demands at my workplace or being highly involved with church or other organizations in the community.  I have also found that much of my busyness comes from my tendency toward order.  I like my house to be tidy.  I like my car to be clean.  I like my yard to look, well, not like a jungle.  While this task-focused aspect of my personality is not a bad thing, if left unmonitored it can be destructive.  I end up doing meaningless tasks much of the time.  I tell myself that after my checklist has been completed I can sit, pray, go for a run, or spend time with people.  The reality is that the checklist never ends and I end up being too tired to do anything else.

My patients are weary.  I also feel overwhelmed at times.  No one is immune to the disease of busyness that is so prevalent in our culture.  I know, I know, busyness does not have an ICD9 code but you get the point.  Busyness prevents us from having intentional and meaningful relationship with our spouses and our families because we are already spent.  It balks at genuine friendship and community.  It eventually inhibits our ability to enjoy life and we forget to "smell the roses."  Even more importantly, busyness can keep us from communing with God.  When we neglect prayer and reading God's Word, we are more prone to fall to the temptations of our sinful nature.  At first following our sinful nature may be pleasurable, but ultimately our lives will be a wreck.  So much stress and sadness could be avoided if we started to say "no" to busyness and instead started to follow God's Word.

So, I am going to echo Socrates and say, "Beware of the barrenness of a busy life."  Let a few dirty dishes in the sink because sometimes it is worth loosening your grip on the checklist.  Don't let the disease of busyness steal what matters most.