Slow bike race (busy versus full).
Slow…
…and low / that is the tempo (shoutout to the Beastie Boys)
Sometimes it feels like a race, a competition amongst people to prove who is busier.
There was this thing I competed in once. A slow bike race. The goal was to go through the course in the longest amount of time without letting your feet touch the ground. If you won, you got a ribbon or bag of peanuts or something, and if you lost, well, you didn’t get decapitated. So the stakes weren’t super high.
You could race through, and finish the course successfully, and, well, cool. You done. It’s not that hard to get through the course if you go fast.
It’s a lot harder if you go slow.
Cause then you gotta balance yourself well and give your concentration, your attention, to doing that thing well. It’s exhilarating and frustrating and comical.
And fun.
The winner takes it all-ish (shoutout to ABBA)
I believe I won the slot I was aiming to win, which was 5th place. That’s a whole different conversation about ways to set yourself up for success, and I have a lot of thoughts on that. 😬
There were four others with slower times, and therefore better times, and therefore higher rankings. But that’s okay. I had fun and I learned something and I think I may have still been awarded a bag of peanuts. A smaller bag.
So I won the slot I decided retroactively I was aiming for, and therefore decided three decades later to write a short anecdote about, which is what I’m doing right now.
Busytown
People love to pack their schedules full. Because it’s what you do. Because when you look around you - and when I say “look around you,” what I eighty-three percent mean is “when you look around you on social media,” you see that everyone is doing stuff. And some people are doing stuff that you’re not doing, which makes you feel like you should be doing it.
So you add it in to your busy life, because it feels like you should.
The lives of others and myself
And even more important than having a full schedule is letting people know you have a full schedule.
That your day is packed. And probably tomorrow and the next weekend, and probably Christmas and the one after that.
Because life is full, and no one’s life is fuller than yours.
Than mine.
The scientific method
Experiment:
Next time you’re talking to someone and you start to launch into what you think is a very short version, but in reality is probably longer than you think version of how busy you are…
…try asking the other person about their day.
About a moment or highlight that has brought them joy.
About something they don’t feel like facing, or asking about something they have faced that you can congratulate them on.
Ask about their kids.
Their job.
Their life.
You have no idea
This stuff has been studied and written about and discussed into the ground. Yeah yeah yeah, we all need to slow down, blah blah.
“But I can’t. I can’t. I can’t. You have no effing idea of what my day is like, of what my job is like or how many people are counting on me, or what’s going to crumble if I stop doing what I’m doing or how pieces I’m simultaneously juggling…
…you have no idea.”
A bird high in a tree soaks in some moments of solitude before the family returns.
Questions
That is correct.
I have no idea.
But I could have a better idea, and I could understand more, if we could talk about these things easier.
Make it easier to talk about the tough parts of life.
And I think, I really do, there’s a meta-issue on top of a bunch of stuff that has to do with The Competition of Busyness.
Sidenote: Richard Scarry, one of the finest authors and illustrators ever, created an entire ecosystem of characters based around his fictional Busytown. So wonderful.
Busy. So maybe we accept and agree to carry around with us at all times the knowledge that pretty much everyone is busy.
And that “being busy” is not in and itself a virtue.
But being able to give quality attention is one. And one of the best and easiest ways to give active attention is to do this:
To ask questions.
I truly believe that asking questions is at the heart of so many vibrant and lasting relationships. Relationships of all types, regardless of how deep or shallow, regardless of what the connecting thread is.
Practicing the ability and willingness to ask questions builds so many good things in this world.
It’s good for you.
It’s good for others.
Asking questions, in good faith - not for information, not to store up and weaponize, not for transactional purposes, not to get something so you can deliciously pass it along to a third party (or social media), but simply asking questions of another builds
empathy
understanding
compassion
knowledge and intellect
And it can bring
peace
harmony
strength,
to know the struggles and challenges and successes others have that you may have had no idea of beforehand.
Full
We are busy. You are busy. I don’t know about my busyness in relation to yours. I have no idea. I feel very, very busy, and I feel very, very tired on most days.
I am trying to:
a) be less busy
b) be more thoughtful or mindful about not letting people know how busy I am.
Because…what does that serve and who does it help?
I am trying to:
a) live more fully
b) and…well, that’s pretty much it.
Live more fully. And I don’t mean “fully” in a hocus-pocus, everything is gonna be better if I just center myself with three hours of yoga and TM before breakfast.*
I mean fully in the sense of
a) shifting my internal language, literally, to self-describing my life as full. Not busy. But full.
b) if something is full, then something’s gotta be emptied before you can put more in. So if my life is full, if my day is full,
I cannot make more of it. I cannot make more hours. And there are many - most - things I cannot remove from doing that day. Because they are necessary. Or maybe not. But that’s for another discussion too.
What I can do though, is to try and keep the right amount of Full by emptying the glass regularly.
By engaging in the lives of others around me, whoever they are (in my case, they’re frequently children) with questions, with attention, with active engagement.
In concrete terms:
Can I take five or ten minutes out of an hour to play with a child? To inquire about someone else’s life, even if it’s as simple a question as what they listened to on their commute to work? Can I live a full life (or day), without draining it at one extreme and without overflowing (too much) at the other, by regularly, frequently re-balancing…
…by tipping the jar and emptying some of it out?
I realize this metaphor is starting to get weird, awkward, and not altogether coherent or relevant. It is a metaphor truly worthy of its author.
Point is, we have full lives, and it often feels like an unspoken elephant in the circus corner that we can’t let people know, or think, we’re not too busy. Because that’s what we do. We need to be busy,
because busy equals productive,
and we need to be productive in order to best masquerade our inherent and growing consumerist tendencies that are fed and nourished every single day:
Three young children clamber up a dangerous hillside deep in the heart of a dangerous forest.
The message that gets blasted at us constantly that we need more.
That there’s things we’re missing out on. Places we’re missing out on. Apps that would help our children so much if only we’d pay $3.99 a month for them. All kinds of things and products and places and experiences that would make our lives better.
But maybe we don’t need busier lives, or better lives.
But fuller lives. Fuller lives that start with a willingness to actively ask questions. To ask questions in search of
connection
understanding
knowledge
connection
Yep. I included connection twice. Bookended it. Because again, I believe that connections that become meaningful are actually relationships that are based on mutual respect and acknowledgment…
…and that the easiest and best way to begin and sustain the process of making connections and building meaningful relationships for yourself and those around you…
…starts with asking questions. Questions in good faith, without agenda, that are the reward in and of themself.
Questions lead to conversation.
Conversation leads to understanding and ideas and knowledge and opportunities and so many good things.
I am certain with all of my 37 trillion cells that two of the defining traits of the next generation, of those who will find success in the areas important to them, will be the ability to
Give sustained attention
and to
Actively ask questions in good faith
——
*not knocking yoga or transcendental meditation at all. just not my experience and not the focus of this piece today
Today, a Monday
To say today was full would be an understatement.
Mondays are full.
Weekdays are full.
Weekends are full.
Rich, intense, vivid, irreplaceable, et cetera. Not much room left for anything else, and not much energy left stored up by nightfall.
It was a full day.
Bedtime
In a similar manner that leads a child to suddenly crave a long-castaway toy when they realize you’re giving it to someone else, a child suddenly gains blasts of energy when they realize you’re dead tired and need them to do one thing now. Right now.
Go. To. Sleep.
Go the blank to sleep
Raced through the rituals. Shoved the four-year old in bed. Tried to pull up one last positive interaction to close out the full day so I could go climb on a couch and either read some more Crime and Punishment or finish watching Minari.
I love you more than the biggest whale in the entire universe.
I said affectionately.
One last dialogue
Well,
he said.
I love you more than a bird.
A bird?
I said.
Like…one bird?
Yeah.
he giggled.
Just kidding. I actually love you forty-four.
You serious!?
I said.
That’s great! Forty-four is one of my favourite numbers!
I know,
he said.
But I don’t actually love you that much. I actually love you more like…one.
Cool.
I said.
One. I’ll take it.
He raised his head off the pillow.
I said I love you one.
he said.
One is not very much.
Oh, I’m good with one,
I said.
We’re cool.
His face wrinkled up.
One is not very much. I said “one” because I don’t actually love you very much.
I know.
I said.
Thank you! I’ll take one!
Oh,
he said,
his shoulders slumping as his filthy head burrowed into the pillow again.
Well…I think I want to be vegetarian and not-vegetarian.
Oh.
I said.
How does that work?
Well,
he said.
I like carrots, and I also want to try chicken. Because I’ve never tried chicken before. So can we have chicken for breakfast?
No.
I said.
We’re a vegetarian family. And also, I love you more than two huge giant whales.
Can you leave now?
he said.
I want to go to sleep.
Okay, I guess you can.
I said.
Since it’s been a full day.
——
