Busy

I sit in a Starbucks, watching the current of people sweep past the windows. I remember being in a glass-bottomed boat once, in the tropics. This feels like a glass-bottomed boat. What do all these people do? Hour after hour, day after day, all the people around me are busy. Some are very busy. What do they do?

My theory is that most of them are functionaries. They seem to be doing functionary jobs. Most seem deeply concerned about setting up another meeting, returning another phone call, or responding to another email. If you could weigh the importance of what they each do in a day, what would that weigh? What would the sum total of all the stuff that everybody rushed around doing in a day weigh? An once? A gram? In the whole world, would it add up to the weight of a single SUV? A peach? I don’t think so.

An alternative view might be that everybody is practicing, getting more proficient. But practicing for what? In the bigger scheme of things, can anything add up to the lasting weight of simply loving somebody? Henri Nouwen said that we are all products of being badly loved. I believe that. What if we changed that? Wouldn’t carving out a little time each day to love a bit better be more worthy of our energy?