Tuesday, October 6, 2009

"Busy" hides a broken man

It seems like a very appropriate time to write about a favorite topic of mine. Its a topic I understand well, and its one which affects most of us. Busy-ness... I wrote a song about a year ago called Slow Down. Here are the words:

Slow down, slow down
no need for sound
endure some silence
slow down, slow down

Forever chaos, frenzy, day-loss
No sleep, speed freak
You never see light
You've only half-life
Your work is your wife

Your solution. - noise polution
"busy" hides a broken man
"busy" fakes you
overtakes you
playing "catch me if you can"

Slow down, slow down
no need for sound
endure some silence
slow down, slow down

There are many busy people in this world, including me, or at least thats what I often tell people. But is it true? We use the word "busy" as an excuse for our laziness, or our failure to discipline ourselves. We say "I've just been so busy" or if asked how is work we might say "It's so busy right now".  In some cases its true, we are busy but I'm certian that most of us like to give the impression that we are busier than we are. It is after all a failsafe excuse for many things.

I know I'm guilty of this, and if you can see this in yourself too, I dare you to read on.

Have you ever stopped to asked yourself why you're so busy? Or rather, why you allow yourself to be so busy. We know that its not good to be so busy that we don't socialise, that we don't see family or friends or that life passes us by before we realise that we forgot to actually enjoy it! Yet, for some reason we allow ourselves to succumb to business. Funny isn't it, the word "business" could be taken as a very negative word. And I actually think it should be. The business world - all the people on this planet who allow their work to control their lives. A businessman - a man so busy with business that he seldom sees his kids. Of course I'm talking extremes here, but you get my point I hope, the subtext here is that making money is given higher priority than the things we really should be valuing.

Busy hides a broken man. When faced with troubles we often try to stay busy so that we avoid thinking about the problems. While this works as a temporary solution, in fact it does nothing but delay actually dealing with problems, be they emotional, material, spiritual, physical - whatever. This busy-ness can easily become  a habitual method of getting by. As long as you stay busy, keep focussed, stay driven,  you'll be alright. If however, the music stops for one moment, the whole world comes crashing down.

The music does inevitably stop...