bythemethod.com blog

Holidays are a chance to get away from it all at last. After working around the clock for the whole year we now anticipate a few hours of rest. For some of us it will have been a long hard struggle to keep going until the time for the holiday has arrived.

Then again we did manage to get some short breaks in and we have developed a hobby and every now and then we have a massage to make us feel better.

But are we really getting away from it all? Is there any way we can get away from it all?

Do short term fixes ever really help us?

There are many ways of getting a short relaxation fix. It is good to relax, it is important to relax. These things are wonderful while they last but sadly they only ever last for a short time.

We often resort to a different kind of busyness to help us cope with the ordinary busyness of life. Yet ultimately it is always a form of busyness and the part of life that makes us busy comes with us wherever we go.

Even holidays are packages produced to help us fill up the time we have for holidays.

Wherever we go our busyness comes with us

So no matter what we do or where we try to escape from the feeling of being busy comes with us and after a short time of relaxation in which we might feel we are dealing with our busyness we are back in the world where it all began. So often we treat the symptoms of busyness without a thought to the root of the problem.

I watched a makeover programme the other day where a woman was given new clothes, new makeup, new hair and even had some wrinkles smoothed out. These things had a positive effect on the woman. She gained self confidence. She walked much taller. She was happier. I am always very glad to see someone happy and this was a positive move for her. Then because she had a new self she decided she wanted a new life and was going to move to a different country to start one. I really hope it works out for her - maybe it will.

However one thing that many people in a similar position to herself don’t bank on is that they take the very thing that created their previous life with them - themselves. When we try to get away from it all the very thing that creates that ‘all’ in our lives is us. Underneath the new clothes, new makeup etc is still the same person. Wherever you go on holiday or live or whatever hobbies you have or whatever massage you enjoy or whatever form of meditation you employ ultimately you take yourself and your busyness with you.

Now don’t panic because I believe that it is possible to become less busy and to have a more fulfilling life but more of that later.

Some of us hate not being busy

Are you the kind of person who is always on the go? If you are at home you are on the Internet or watching TV or talking on the telephone. Some of us keep really busy because we hate the thought of not being busy. We somehow believe that time spent not being busy is time wasted.

It’s just the kind of world we live in

Our enjoyment of the fixes to our busyness is a temporary solution provided by the very world that creates the busyness in the first place. We create busyness we can enjoy to offset the busyness we struggle with but all the solutions come from the kind of world that we live in - a busy one.

Yet all of the offered solutions are just band-aids (plasters) on the problem. We use simple ways of helping us survive but always they come from within the very system that creates the problem in the first place.

Even a lot of modern day spirituality offers the same kinds of solutions. We have settled for spirituality that is made up from our self. We have developed a kind of consumerist spirituality that allows us to pick and mix from whatever we fancy.

We need to step outside the normal world

The truth is that true spirituality is not found from within this worlds system. If we are going to discover a release from the busyness - a place of true peace - a silent place - then we need to somehow escape from the normal world with its suffocating busyness.

Don’t get me wrong - there are some things about the world that I like and enjoy. I’m also not advocating we abandon this world and set off with nothing to a desert oasis. That would just be escapism and would not really help us anyway.

What we do need to do is to think in a different way. We need to be prepared to step outside the ordinary and into the extra-ordinary.

We will explore more of how to do that in other posts.