Are You Busy or Are You Hiding?

It was Easter vacation. The youngest (and only one still living at home) was out of high school for the week. His mother, who had finally discovered she had a life of her own, visited me. She looked terrible. She hadn't combed her hair. She had on an old T-shirt, no make-up and her mouth drooped. She had a multitude of excuses for why she hadn't brought her current project to work on. When asked what was wrong, she snapped and admitted she had a headache. (Headaches aren't allowed.) Why? Did you follow your eating regimen? Get adequate rest? We checked out every possible reason until it finally dawned on her. Her 15-year-old was home from school for the week. That was it! She was avoiding him and his violation of "her" space. She'd gone to lunch with a friend, gone shopping, gone visiting, had just plain gone to avoid dealing with him on a continual basis. She was inventing busy-ness to avoid life!

Another example of busy-ness is Marie, who fills every second of her time with a full-time career, graduate school classes, a husband who also takes classes, two pre-teenagers, two dogs, a bird, and several cats. She has no time to keep her house clean. This also gives her the perfect excuse not to have friends. Marie was an unhappy child of older parents and left this environment to enter an abusive first marriage. She is physically beautiful but beauty is not the feature about her that you notice first. It is immediately apparent that she does not feel beautiful. In fact you have to look twice to realize that she is. Marie has substituted busy-ness for living and uses it as a wall to hide behind so she doesn't have to deal with people who can't be trusted not to hurt her.

Busy-ness is an addiction in the same class with being "sick," which is nature's legitimate copout. I can't do whatever (this includes housework) because I am too busy/sick.

Living in a "mess" is disruptive to the inner person so escape is sought. Acquisition of things, treadmill lifestyle, and supermom syndrome, are some examples of busy-ness which may be used to avoid reality (truth), the purpose of life. I don't have to face reality when I am "working," taking the kids to ballet lessons, football practice, watching TV, reading fiction (or non-fiction). I'm too busy. More and more craziness is crammed into less and less time until life becomes caught up in an endless, mindless, whirlwind with no aim, leaving in its wake exhaustion and a "stop the world so I can get off" feeling. Are you really choosing to be "busy" or are you re-acting to past rejection?