I cannot feel parts of my face. No, I have not had a mini-stroke and no, I have not been to the dentist. Apparently, I'm stressed out. Many of you are reading this and nodding in empathy. What?! I had never heard of this, but a quick Google search landed me on "Wrongdiagnosis.com" which added a new word to my vocabulary: paresthesia. I'm too busy at the moment to learn how to properly pronounce that affliction let alone go a real doctor to get a "rightdiagnosis". I notice that many of us are suffering from being too busy to take care of our health- even in small ways. Over the Thanksgiving holiday I observed one woman at the airport too busy to put down the phone as she waited for, entered and emerged from a restroom stall. She just kept on chatting, too busy to wash her one employable hand. Who knows what germs were spread that day. In October, I read Arianna Huffington's blog in which she briefly mentioned how busyness endangered her own health. A stressful schedule caused her body to simply walk off the job one day, no longer working for the grey wrinkled tyrant. Her intimate labor strike ended in loss of consciousness and a fractured cheekbone. This little side-note in her jam packed, multifaceted story so struck me that I have always remembered it. All this facial throbbing is making me reconsider just what's at stake here. This goes beyond the physical, it's about soul survival.
Our bodies are barometers for what is happening, registering the attacks on our time as well as our mind. I am kept so occupied that I'm unable to actually "be" in the current experience because I'm already mentally in the next moment. My life is so sped up I can't seem to process it as its happening. My soul is shredding. The attacks on time and thought are insidious and pernicious; I'm dying from a series of flesh wounds. Email is a good example, the address I originally provided to track my order is now an invasion route for seconds to be stolen from my life. I can't simply "delete all," I must slow to select the first... third through fifth... and seventh email in my mailbox. (Just reading that sentence slowed you!) Seconds count! This mental minutiae is a legitimate siege not only on my time, but upon my most precious resource, my thoughts. There is a real business term out there to describe the goal of this marketing strategy and it is called mindshare. Marketers fight to keep their product present in the very neurons of my brain. Get out of my head!
Every electron in my body is already gainfully employed. I need to keep from leaving one of my children stranded at tennis or swim practice or dance lesson. I also need to remember to make a hotel reservation in DC for a visit in three days, write two papers and generate a social justice presentation due next week in graduate school, fight for the $720 in fraudulent charges on my credit card, purchase enough stuff to stuff a stocking for the church charity project and prepare for three family birthdays that are within the next ten days. I'm not whining here, you have your own pressing "to do" list- I'm joining you. Misery loves company. I'm so wired from having so much to do, I feel like an animated corpse operating on overdrive; electricity is pulsing through the tingles in my cheek. I know not everyone is losing feeling in parts of their body nor are they taking nose dives to the pavement in the middle of the day, but we Americans are stressed out and the needle on Frankenstein's amp is only pinging upward as the holidays bear down.
It's time to learn some karmic katas. Katas are a series of predefined martial arts movements that can be used to defend oneself. Fortunately there are some masters of the dojo. Erma Bomback shared hard earned wisdom when she contracted breast cancer. Among many important things, she said, "I would have gone to bed when I was sick instead of pretending the earth would go into a holding pattern if I weren't there for the day." That's kung fu form number one, if you are ill, take care of yourself. You are under physical attack.
Kung fu form number two comes from the pickle jar theory, illustrated by Stephen Covey. A presenter sets an empty pickle jar on the table. He then continues to put large rocks into the jar until no more will fit and asks the audience if the jar is full. When they answer "No", he brings out a bag of pebbles and pours them in. He again asks if the jar is full. He follows with a sack of sand and a pitcher of water. The point is not simply that you can always make more room in your schedule. The wisdom is that you must get the large rocks- the things you value- in first.
However, there is a hidden vulnerability in this maneuver that you must be aware of to properly protect yourself. The things you highly value such as family, exercise, achievement, charity and the environment are also your weaknesses. The Praestar Project, a values- based personal development program I participated in, counseled that we volunteer our time to what we value most. So the next time you are asked to head the school committee or to take on the extra project at work, give yourself 24 hours to commit. This is more than a simple time management assessment. Earlier I mentioned those stockings I signed up to stuff. I rushed through purchasing the items and dropped them off early because I will be out of town on "stuffing Sunday". The end result is that I didn't even have the time to take a moment to actually feel the love I am trying to express for my fellow man. 1 Corinthians 13:3 instructs "If I gave everything I have to the poor and even sacrificed my body I could boast about it, but if I didn't love others, it would be of no value whatsoever." Once again busyness is robbing us of the true meaning of not only Christmas, but of our lives.
Doubtless even with these powerful insights we will continue to live hectic, busy existences out of necessity and, at times, just for the sheer fun of it. Somehow, though, for our souls to survive, we must as E.M. Forster said, "connect." Huffington, also wrote in her multifaceted post that "the next big thing on the Internet will be a paradox: connecting in order to learn how to better disconnect from our always connected lives and reconnect with ourselves -- which is, after all, the ultimate connection." True. Here I am blogging about wanting to somehow disconnect while being connected. I hope this post connects with you, helps you find ways to disconnect to protect you and that you will connect to those of us here by sharing your best karmic kata for soul survival.