WHY THE RUSH?

By Christine Jayakaran

October 6^th, 2021

Have you ever felt the need to just stop!

To just quit what you're running behind and maybe take a long breather.

It feels like ever since the pandemic locked us at home, we all have more to do than before. We have work at home, work from home and work for those at home. The to-do lists have grown, our online commitments have increased and our need to complete more in the same 24 hours has exponentially increased. Now I know this is not the case for everyone. I hear of cases where employees at companies are totally slacking off because they have no one to monitor them. I hear of students who barely sit in class thanks to the option of no video. These 18 months have made the hard-working, harder working and the laid back ones, well, I don't want to make any assumptions.

The point is that all of this work, work, work is making all of us increasingly dull. We don't have the mind space for creative pursuits, we barely have time for meaningful conversation, we have no energy for the truly impactful events of our lives.

Our children have two thirty-minute breaks in their online school day and I love watching what they do at that time. I didn't always love watching what they did because I was usually frantically helping them study for a test or finish some pending classwork. During this term though I gave them room to figure out their workdays and found that during those breaks they were either out in the garden playing football, in their rooms grabbing a quick make-believe game with their super heroes or having a mini creative spurt with art and craft. Just as the class would begin, they would run back to their seats and log in. I found that their attention span is so much better and they are so much more involved in their classes after they have really taken their break seriously!

Why should we adults, be any different?

Why don't we take breaks?

Why do we act like the world would collapse if we didn't reply to that mail immediately or reply to that text?

Why do we jump from meeting to meeting and preen when we say ‘we have been so busy’ ?

Why does it mean so much to us to keep our schedules packed to capacity?

Does it massage our egos?

Does it add to our feelings of self-worth?

Does it keep us occupied in order to avoid thinking about the hard stuff?

Whatever it does - I know what it doesn't do. It doesn't help us in the long run. We will be a jaded and burnt out generation if we are not careful.

We will have accolades, accomplishments and advancements without priorities, purpose and passion.

The choice is ours - are we going to pick hectic schedules with endless days that melt into endless nights, or will we gladly settle for days filled with sweet interludes where we might just do... well....nothing!