In This Edition:
1. March Forward
2. Running in Place and not Liking it
3. Telltale Signs of Being too Busy
4. Low Quality Leisure
5. I Think it's Funny...
March Forward
Here in the "southern part of heaven" or so they call Chapel Hill,
it seems like we're going to have an early spring. Ah, but we've been
fooled before. Six days in a row of plus 60 temperatures doesn't mean it
can't snow again! My daughter has had seven cancelled schooled days
already. So, it looks like summer school for everyone!
Running in Place and not Liking it
Multitasking seems to be pervasive despite the obvious (to me at
least) drawbacks. So, put down that tuna fish sandwich and read this
closely! When you read while you eat, or vice versa, neither activity is
fully experienced, and the clock seems to tick faster. You may read while
eating alone for company, not because of time pressure; nevertheless, your
perception is that the hour is passing more quickly.
Writer Marta Vogel observes: "Early man looked at his food to make
sure it was dead and that it didn't have any bugs in it." 21st century man,
however, no longer looks at the food it self; he looks at the package.
"Corporate America discovered that man could become addicted to package
reading in almost any situation," says Vogel.
Recognizing our craving for information, advertisers provide
pleasing product packaging. The average cereal box contains about 2,000
words, equal to eight pages of a book. Vogel says, "Generic products [of
the same quality as mid-level brands] were offered with the knowledge that
no one might buy wordless cardboard and risk an attack of package
deprivation."
Package deprivation? It probably comes as no surprise to you that
more than half our population wears clothes or accessories designed with
slogans and messages on them.
Attraction to labeling and package copy further robs you of breathing space.
So do clothes, yours or others', with messages on them. Minute bits of
extraneous data do have a cumulative impact. You deserve a real break
today. Eat some nutritious food, with people in message-free clothing, and
with no reading material in sight.
Other symptoms abound -- not only while eating. Do you attempt to
think, converse, study, or even make love with distractions? Do you go
through the motions of attempting to con centrate with office noise? Do you
awake by alarm clock?
Do three square meals and sufficient sleep mean anything to you?
Are long-standing hobbies no longer of interest to you? Do old friends only
merit an occasional phone call? Do you attempt to converse while watching
television? Do you "need" to wind down before bed in front of the TV? Can
you even sit in front of it without turning it on?
Telltale Signs of Being too Busy
- If you're too busy to enjoy your life, you're too busy.
- If you're too busy to stay calm, you're too busy.
- If you're too busy to stay in shape, you're too busy.
- If you're too busy to see your friends, you're too busy.
- If you think that someday you'll catch up in all these areas, you're living
under a delusion.
Low Quality Leisure
Leisure, as a concept, is on the rocks. Surely, it no longer means
total hours minus work hours. True leisure -- enjoying a rewarding activity
free from work and preoccupation with work -- is a necessary component of a
balanced life.
When the shift between pressure-filled activity and true leisure is
abrupt, the quality of your leisure is likely to suffer. Is your leisure
squeezed between frenzied activities?
Strains of the workweek tend to make you place great emphasis on your
weekends and other days off. You hope to relax, but the pressure is
enormous, and often you can't rest even when you've got the hours to do so.
Constant time-pressure invariably leads to anxiety and guilt about
where and to what you give your attention. Many fathers' weekend encounters
with their children are scheduled, if they exist at all. "Dad never plays
with us any more." Do your kids says that?
The pressured individual feels guilty both doing too much and doing
too little. "Could I have done more?" "Should I have done otherwise?"
Even when blessed with leisure, your mind may not be free to enjoy it.
Parents are concerned about how long they spend with their kids.
Spouses feel guilty about periods spent away from each other. Pressed and
frazzled by the onslaught of responsibili ties, more couples are finding it
exhausting to have to "be" with one another - to converse, empathize and
respond. The inability to be with one another is a yet-to-be-recognized
fallout of a time-pressured existence.
Annually, the number of families headed by a single adult, usually
female, is growing, placing inordinate strains on working individuals with
children. Families with two income earners have more income and spend more,
but invariably experience greater time-pressure. In any case, a cultural
inability to relax dogs us and negates many benefits leisure traditionally
has provided.
This, in turn, impacts the quality of your work day. Even as
more labor-saving and enhanced communication technologies are introduced,
and your output and efficiency rises, your expectations directly increase.
You become less satisfied with yourself for not doing more.
Human Doings -- The feeling of no breathing space can quickly
pervade all aspects of your life, diminish your happiness and eliminate any
joie de vivre. The cycle can get vicious. Lacking a balance between work
and play, responsibility and respite, "getting things done" becomes the
end-all. You function like a human doing instead of a human being.
You begin to link successfully executing the items on your growing
"to do" list with feelings of worthiness. As the list keeps growing longer,
the lingering sense of more to do infil trates your sense of harmony and
self-acceptance.
You are whole and complete right now. Everything on your "to-do"
list, even at the workplace, is undertaken at your option. You are not your
tasks, they don't define you and they don't constrain you!!
On a deeply felt personal level, recognize that from now on you
will be subjected to an ever-increasing number of items competing for your
attention. You cannot handle everything, nor is making the attempt
desirable. Recognize, with the clarity of death, that life is finite; you
can no longer wistfully in-take the daily deluge and expect to achieve
balance. You cannot submissively yield to the din and settle for living
your life in what's left over after each day's onslaught. Make sensible
choices about what is best ignored and what merits your attention.
I Think it's Funny...
The cell phone user's unspoken credo has become: "You're nobody unless
you're talking to somebody." Ergo, if you're not talking, you're not anyone!
Meanwhile, they discuss at length the most banal aspects of their existence.
("I'm backing out of the parking lot stall,
honey.") Idle mouths make for idle minds, or so it seems to the incessant
gabbers.
Look around your home and your office. Have you been caught in the trap of
acquiring a technology item far in advance of your ability to use it?
"Driven by our obsession to compete, we've embraced the electronic god with
a frenzy," says Bill Henderson, head of the Lead Pencil Club. "Soon, blessed
with the facts, voice and email, computer hook-ups, and TVs with hundreds of
channels, we won't have to leave our lonely rooms--not to write a check,
work, visit, shop, exercise, or make love. We will have raced at incredible
speeds to reach our final destination--nothing."
