The Balance of Doing and Being
by Dana Snyder-Grant
The Beacon (Acton MA)
"Connections" column
12/31/2009
The following email messages come at me in rapid succession:
A friend sends out notice of her play production at Boston University. Our condo manager informs us of windows that need replacement. A colleague at the MS Society confirms the dates of a support group which I lead. My sister thanks me for hosting Thanksgiving and asks for a friend's postal address.
I feel like a ping pong ball.
Another friend invites us to a New Year's Eve party. "Back by popular demand!" he announces. A neighbor is looking to upgrade his dishwasher and sends a query to surrounding homes. Another shares her fear that she had a detached retina, and warns us of its symptoms. I throw up my hands and shout, “Too much information!” I'm developing some kind of attention deficit.
It's great to have the direct means of communication that email provides, but it intrudes in my life when I don't say no. I've become lost in the morass of email; I haven't completed a new piece of writing in months.
I don't need all this. I'm going on a email hiatus. Didn't I say this several years ago? In January 2006, I wrote a column about such craziness. Actually, it was just email overload then. Now I've taken it to the next step. Email spurs me into action. Organize. Lead. Teach. Do.
How dare I get so busy this time! How dare I use email as a means to let life overwhelm me. Stop it! I feel well – it is exciting! So I take on one more thing. And then another. And something else. Help to organize a friend's ordination. In fact, make sure that there is child care in place for the event. Child care? Me? Join a committee to help organize Margaret Fuller's bicentennial in Concord. Join a book group for spiritual reading. Offer therapy at a breast cancer support center.
When will it stop? And what keeps it going? Am I afraid that no one will need me? I want to enjoy the opportunities that my wellness allows, but I need to get back that balance between doing and being.
So ironically, I send an email to friends, trying to understand the relationship between email and busyness. I ask,
“How do you use email that feels good? How do you use email that doesn't feel good? What do you like and not like about being busy?”
I'm most struck by one reply:
“Sometimes I get so overwhelmed by my busyness that I long for a sick day, to make the busyness stop. In reality, I can choose to use that busy time to rest or do nothing, but it takes a high degree of self-awareness to make that choice.” Her words remind me that to rest or “do nothing” is something. It feeds the soul.
I go to a workshop - “Journaling: The Art and Science of Self Expression.” I feel reinvigorated and focused. But the next day, I'm exhausted and continue to wonder if it isn't all too much.
That day, I return home after seeing a few clients and feel the tiredness in my body. It is time to stop, breathe, rest, connect with a close friend. Breathe. Rest.
I haven't napped in months. This time, I rest in bed, not just lie on the couch. I don't really fall asleep but I drift. After forty-five minutes, I rouse, feeling hungry. The downstairs door opens and closes. My husband comes upstairs. I'm awake now.
I get up, have a yogurt and half a bagel. I decide to walk in the woods – into the serene conservation land where bare maples and pines stand tall above the brook. It's a good place to breathe. I run into some neighbors with their dogs. We walk and talk of how easy it is to get overwhelmed these days. One talks about jealousy of her husband's Blackberry, describing his fingers moving rapidly as he texts at home. About the wife of a friend who threw her husband's iPhone into the toilet. We are having affairs with our messengers. I am so not alone.
I go over to Franny's house to help her arrange the table seating for her son's bar mitzvah on Saturday. I read names out loud from scraps of paper while she types them into her computer. This is connection and I enjoy the focused task; its pace suits me. I think about how I've bought into our multitasking culture even though it doesn't fit with my body or mind. I've lost my balance. The frantic pace can stop if I accept my limits, if I'm willing to say no and be my own person, if I know the good life to be a more mindful and centered way of being.
The next day, I start my day by writing this column. Later, I check email, and remember the delete button on my computer's keyboard. And use it.
Dana Snyder-Grant is a social worker and a free-lance writer who lives in
Acton. Her new book, Just Like Life, Only More So and Other Stories of Illness,
can be purchased at Willow Books in Acton or on the internet at http://www.justlikelifeonlymore