Busy-ness As An Occupation

Painting of Mary Magdalene by Henry Holliday, 1866

This is the sixth obstacle to the creative pattern– (to doing what we are here to do)– in response to Marie Howe's poem in the voice of Mary Magdalene: Magdalene– The Seven Devils.

The beginning line of Marie Howe's poem is: The first was that I was very busy

Where does the time go? What happened? How did we get to this place of not having time? Was it yesterday? Ten years ago? Longer? Today? Now? What does it mean to say: I don't have any time? Who or what did you sell your time to?

How often have you walked up to someone that you haven't seen in awhile and when you ask her how she is doing she says: I'm busy!? This is an automatic response that doesn't tell us much.

So when I catch myself answering the question How are you doing? with that all too common phrase, I'm busy– I try to remember to stop myself and pay attention to the moment, and to who is asking the question. And pause before I respond.

Being busy is something a lot of us can relate to. Often, it is our minds grasping for distraction– and in our world, is a sort of occupation that gives us validity. We are, after all, doing something!

And what is time anyway?

Many of us experience time as a tyrant– something that we can never keep up with. And our response is often to run faster. Adults live in linear time. But watch a child who is just learning to speak. How she unselfconsciously juggles now with yesterday and tomorrow– giving us a fresh perspective. She has not yet learned about this thing called linear time.

Like children, we have all had the experience of "being in the zone". This lovely experience of timelessness, or the memory of it, fuels the desire to create, to be a maker, to get back there. We want to be in it. But how do we get there? Joseph Campbell gives us a clue when he asks: What did you do as a child that created timelessness? That made you forget time? There is the myth to live by. What Campbell is saying, is that by asking ourselves what we did as a child that gave us this devotion to the moment, we can find our way back to another kind of time.

I'd love to hear your thoughts on how busy-ness occupies your time, or how you get back to what is important, to what has less to do with time–

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I Am Different From You