By Melissa Camara Wilkins
Very early in the morning, while it was still dark, Jesus got up, left the house and went off to a solitary place, where he prayed. — Mark 1:35
Busyness is complicated all on its own. You have to keep one eye on the clock, you have to remember what day it is, you have to know how much time is left before the next thing on your list. But the real question is, why are you keeping yourself so busy? If you can figure that out, you’re halfway to making things simpler. (Spoiler alert: It took me a while.)
“What did you two do today?” Dane would ask every night over dinner.
Well, we’d kept in nearly constant motion, at least.
It didn’t occur to me that all that running around didn’t actually get me anywhere. I just felt important and special because my days were full of activity. When someone asked, “How are you?” I did not have to say, “Tired and confused—I don’t know if I’m doing the right things with my child and myself and my life. Every decision feels heavy and important and also probably inconsequential in the long-term, and I don’t know which feeling to trust. The afternoons are so long—so, so long—and I don’t know what to do with them. More laundry? Am I allowed to just read books I want to read and grow tomatoes because I like them, or do I have to be doing something that looks more like work since I’m not earning any dollars at the moment? I don’t know if I’m supposed to try to justify that or not. I don’t even know if I’m moving in the right direction. How can you tell?”
Instead I could say, “I’m busy! So busy. Always busy. Keeping busy!” Which meant, “I am important, or at least not lazy. My days are not aimless! My life is not meaningless!” That’s almost a direct translation.
I was taking the disorientation of new parenthood and turning it in a hundred dizzying directions, so I never had to look right at it. I was distracting myself from all my tiny, gnawing anxieties instead of giving them a voice. I was chasing after feelings of importance instead of asking real questions about purpose and meaning and worth. It wasn’t the best plan I ever had, I will say.
And then I had another baby.
A few weeks after Owen was born, I glanced at the calendar. The squares were all scribbled over right up until the day he arrived, and then—nothing. Blank squares as far as the eye could see. (Which, admittedly, was not very far because a month only has 30 days, but that feels like a long time with a newborn.)
If all those things on the calendar had been important, I was losing my grip on what mattered. Or else I had been spending my days on things that had not mattered so much in the first place. Could that be? That could be.
I could feel my sense of direction seeping right out of me. I’d thought I had purpose and I’d thought I had plans, but the whole plan was really just “do the next thing on the next square.”
Motion always feels like it matters. And it does, sort of, because movement is a sign of life. Living things are always growing and changing. But busyness is only a shadow of that kind of movement.
Parents are especially susceptible to confusing the two because life with children is full of movement, but not necessarily forward momentum. It’s more full of cyclical rhythms that are forever coming undone. You put your child to bed, and she wakes up in the morning and needs to be put to bed again the next day. You wash all the clothes and put them away, but they’re dirty again five minutes later, and all the progress you thought you’d made has disappeared. You make breakfast, you make snacks, you make lunch, you make snacks, you make dinner and also snacks. Then you make breakfast again. You tell your toddler to play on the floor instead of climbing the walls, he seems to understand, and then before you have time to sneeze, he is standing on tiptoe trying to reach the light fixture that hangs over the kitchen table. There is always movement, but it’s running in circles and jumping on the furniture.
And what are the markers of success for a parent? You move in the same direction until you cross the finish line? There is no finish line. Are you getting closer to your goal? Your goal is to help that child who is currently putting spaghetti in her hair to one day become a fully functioning adult member of society. Are we closer today than yesterday, when she ate Play-Doh®?
What are the markers of success for anyone? You have an enduring sense of wholeness, you make meaningful and lasting contributions to the world at large, you make space for other people to step into their own purpose and worth? These are not the kinds of things a person can accomplish by next Thursday.
Busy at least looks like you’re working hard at the process.
Process is a marvelous place to focus, but I could have chosen to build my process on some criteria other than “moving all our legs faster than a beetle flipped on its back.” Maybe I could have asked myself whether I was enjoying the process of my life, or whether we were strengthening and deepening our relationships, or whether I was showing up as myself in my days. That would have been another way to think about process. Not how much I did, not how fast I moved, not did I get anywhere today, but how present was I, and how aware. Those could have been simpler markers of being on the right track.
I did not think of those, though. I was too intent on jumping the checkers around the board at all times. I didn’t care where they were going, only that they kept moving. It’s interesting, it’s a way to play—it’s just that it is, at the end of the day, pointless. Busy feels important, but it isn’t building anything lasting.
I hadn’t noticed. I had let my identity and my worth get all tied up in the busyness until it looked to me like a badge of honor.
Someone would say, “Let’s try to get together sometime,” and I wouldn’t say yes, and I wouldn’t say no—such boring, straightforward answers. There’s no intrigue in a yes or a no.
Instead I could say, “Let’s do that! I’ll have to check my calendar.” It’s like following that old dating advice about not being too available; If I’m busy, I must be in demand. What I might be busy doing, well, that is mysterious and interesting. Just the fact that I’m busy suggests that other people want me around. It says that I must be worth knowing, doesn’t it?
But keeping busy creates days that are full, not days that are fulfilling. That’s not a journey, that’s a carousel.
Taken from Permission Granted: Be Who You Were Made to Be and Let Go of the Rest by Melissa Camara Wilkins. Click here to learn more about this title.
From award-winning blogger Melissa Camara Wilkins, come and find a stunningly simple path to confidence and clarity. All you have to do is give yourself permission to show up as your gloriously imperfect self.
Trying to fix yourself is exhausting. But being yourself — that is both possible and life-giving. The key is a simple heart-shift from chasing after perfection to learning to tell a truer story about ourselves, the world, and our place in it.
Melissa Camara Wilkins invites you into her journey of discovering the profound simplicity of dropping the pretenses and allowing ourselves to be fully human — flaws and all. This is a story about making life simpler by letting go of who you think you’re supposed to be and becoming who you really are.
With wit and compassion, Melissa explores how to be present, show up as your real self, and get comfortable in your own skin by aligning the truth inside you with the life you live on the outside. Gain confidence with the freeing practices of dropping the mask, abandoning the experts, and understanding your real assignment. With refreshing honesty and insight, Melissa invites you to move from the either/or dichotomy into a spacious freedom of embracing the both/and — brave and scared, messy and real, gloriously imperfect and absolutely enough. This is your permission slip to be your whole, human self.
For everyone who feels the pressure to fit in, measure up, and get it together, Permission Granted is a life-giving invitation to soul-level simplicity.
Melissa Camara Wilkins is an award-winning blogger and host of an online community that explores what it means to be who you were made to be and let go of the rest. She and her husband have six children and live in Southern California. Connect with Melissa at melissacamarawilkins.com.
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