A disease called "I'm busy."

A couple of days ago, I met a friend on the street. He stopped and asked, "How do you, as a family?»

She looked at me from the bottom-up and quietly muttered: "I'm so busy ... so busy. So much navallos not imagine ».

Almost immediately, I ran into a friend and asked him. And again, the same tone, the same answer: "I'm so busy ... so much to do." Quavering voice, tired, cracked.

So not only with adults. When we were ten years ago, we moved to North Carolina, we were thrilled: great city, great schools. We stayed in a nice neighborhood where families with children live. I was sure that everything is fine.

A couple of days after the move we offered friendly neighbors, so that our daughters gathered and played together. The neighbor - excellent, by the way, people - reached for the phone and opened the diary. She thumbed through it ... ... and scroll and scroll. For a long time leafing through. Finally, she said, "That is, it has a free 45 minutes after two and a half weeks. The remaining time to do gymnastics, piano and voice lessons. She's just, well ... very busy ».

This terrible, destructive habits "being busy" develops in us a very, very early.

Will we ever end up living like this? Why did we create this along? Why do this to their children? When did we forget that we are people and machines?

For children it is normal to feel sad, run through the puddles, play, make mistakes, and even bored. We all love our children. But why are we then to overload their childhood that their life was a perpetual stress and a minute of free time - as we do?

What's wrong with the world, where we could sit with your loved ones, and, slowly, to talk about what we think and feel? Where the conversation, full of eloquent silence, which should not be interrupted?

How do we create a world where we have the mountain of cases, things and there is no time to rest, to think, to communicate, to simply be?

We read of Socrates: "A man who understands life, and not worth living." How do you want us to comprehend, to be, to become a man, if we are so busy?

This disease is called "I'm busy" (and this is the diagnosis) is destructive to our health and well-being. It prevents us from being close to my family when we all sit in the same room. It does not give us create the "kinship" that we so desperately crave.

Since 1950, there are so many new technologies. We thought (we promise!), That progress will make life easier, more intuitive, more free. Actually, we do not have any freedom, we can not simply rest, as they could only a few decades ago.

For the so-called "elite" of society the boundary between work and home was erased altogether. All the time we stare into tablets. All. Is our. Fucking. Time.

Smartphones and laptops mean that there is no difference between the office and home. Children fall asleep, and we are back online.

My personal daily war - this is an avalanche of e-mails. Hell, I have declared jihad against the personal e-mail. I always buried under the hundreds of letters and have no idea how to end it. I tried everything: letters posted only in the evenings, do not read them at the weekend, people asked for a personal meeting, instead of a couple of lines. And all the letters piling up and piling up: personal, work, advertising, spam. And people are waiting for a response - right now, not tomorrow. And I, too, turns out to be ... I'm so busy.

Other worse. Many work two jobs for meager wages that the family was kept afloat. Twenty per cent of our children live in poverty, and our elderly parents are forced to look for jobs as watchmen and technicals to keep a roof over your head and eat your fill. We are busy.

So you can not live !!!

When I ask, "How are you?", What I'm really asking?

I'm not asking about the list and not about how many emails you still must answer. I ask, what is happening now in your heart. So tell me.

Tell me what your heart rejoices, or hurt, or sad, tell me what your heart longs for human warmth. Take a look for yourself in your heart, and then tell me. If I ask, I want to know - to know the answer to a live person.

Tell me what you remember that you are a person, not a machine that automatically strikes items from the list. Let's see each other in the eye, shake hands. Let's just talk: talk banish stress, at least in part, give the impression that you are not alone.

Take my hand, take a look in your eyes and be completely with me just one second. Tell us about your heart and get to wake up my heart. Help me to remember that I am also a person who craves human warmth.

I teach at the university, where students are able to "learn from the shock and shock rest" and proud of it. This is a reflection of life all of us even when we relax, we dipped into the same world of surge. Our holiday - the same actions: bright and action sports to sweat.

And what, you ask? I dont know. I do not have any magic solutions. All that I know - we lose the ability to live a real human life.

We need a different attitude to work and technology. We know what we want: meaningfulness, a sense of community, a good life. It's not just about how to "eat" and "buy iPhone abruptly." We want to live like human beings.

The poet William Yeats wrote: "The man who will dare to explore the dark corners of his soul, need more courage than a soldier on the battlefield».

Kakuma explore the dark corners of his soul, when we are so busy? How do we perceive life?

I hope that you offer sensible decision: how to begin to live, how to change our society.

I want my children ran through the puddles, dream and even missed - learn to be human. I want to live in a world where we can stop, look into each other's eyes and touch with to understand what's going on in our hearts.

I'll take a break to think about their own lives, to listen to his weary soul, to find out who I am.

In your heart is going the same?

Let us at least try to build a world in which, when one of us says, "I'm so busy," the second replied: "I know one. I know. We are all busy. But tell me, what's going on in your heart. "