by Maurice Prendergast
Thanks to our Friend for sending us this beautiful art
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Thanks to our Friend for sending us this beautiful art
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Somewhere in the late 20th century we got the idea that busyness is a virtue. We decided that the more activities we can squeeze into our lives, the happier we'll be. What ultimately results, though, is physical and spiritual exhaustion. We jump from one appointment to another, our body and mind racing. We schedule events back to back and overlapping, with no time to rest or reflect. And when we're in one activity, we're either distracted with the thing we've just done or the thing that's coming up. It's not a good way to live.
~Jack Zavada
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A few years ago, on a liner bound for Europe, I was browsing in the library when I came across a puzzling line by Robert Louis Stevenson: "Extreme busyness, whether at school, kirk (church), or market, is a symptom of deficient vitality." Surely, I thought, "deficient" is a mistake--he must have meant "abundant." But R.L.S. went merrily on, "It is no good speaking to such folk: they can not be idle, their nature is not generous enough."
Was it possible that a bustling display of energy might only be a camouflage for a spiritual vacuum? The thought so impressed me that I mentioned it next day to the French purser, at whose table I was sitting. He nodded his agreement. "Stevenson is right," he said. "Indeed, if you will pardon my saying so, the idea applies particularly to you Americans. A lot of your countrymen keep so busy getting things done that they reach the end of their lives without ever having lived at all."
Was it possible that a bustling display of energy might only be a camouflage for a spiritual vacuum? The thought so impressed me that I mentioned it next day to the French purser, at whose table I was sitting. He nodded his agreement. "Stevenson is right," he said. "Indeed, if you will pardon my saying so, the idea applies particularly to you Americans. A lot of your countrymen keep so busy getting things done that they reach the end of their lives without ever having lived at all."
~Arthur Gordon