Opinion Articles

SOUL MATTERS: Contemplating the best answer to busybodies
By Tracey Edstein

“How are you?”
“Busy!”

A long time ago, when I was young, I was taught that the correct answer to the question “How are you?” (regardless of how you actually were) was “Well, thank you.” An alternative favoured by many was “Good” but this was not acceptable in my family. Whether you were well was your call, whether you were good was an entirely different matter.

Nowadays it seems to me that “busy” has become the new “well”, and it's not good. It's not that I doubt the veracity of such a claim, and I have certainly been guilty of saying it at times, but now I try to avoid the standard response. Not only does it usually fail to engage the other person, but any conversation that it gives rise to tends to be predictable at best, banal at worst.

There is a growing tendency to regard “busyness” as not only normal, but desirable, a real indicator of one's worth and status in society. If you are busy, then surely you must be in demand, committed, involved, important. Conversely, if you are brave/foolish enough to admit that you are not busy, the implication can often be that you are not doing your bit, have little to contribute, are not committed – or are just plain lazy.

Admitting to a state of non-busyness is risky business. It invites the other party to suggest ways of addressing that sad state of affairs and before you know it, you're busy just like the rest of us!

As we emerge from the busiest of seasons, there was I felt a real tension between the desire to ‘do Christmas well' – to shop, cook, decorate, entertain, celebrate to the max – and a longing to be still, to rest, to contemplate after the year's travails. It can all be hard work, but nevertheless, it's easier to busy ourselves with externals than to create the space to stop, to let go, to go inward where contemplation is possible….

With a New Year and a new slate, and for many of us, a holiday to contemplate, there is an opportunity to reflect and perhaps to adopt a different approach. It may not, alas, be possible to become suddenly less busy just because the calendar's flipped over to January, but I have resolved to try not to identify my self with my busy ness. If I am busy (and it's all relative), it is largely the result of my choices. There can also be a choice to recognise that it is better to have too much to do than too little. It is good to be well enough to be busy. It is better to have a circle of family and friends which can lead to its own busyness than to be lonely.

After all, as John Lennon proclaimed, when we were all younger, “Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans.”

Tracey Edstein

Tracey Edstein is the editor of Aurora, the magazine of the Catholic Diocese of Maitland-Newcastle.