I’m keeping myself busy.” Lots of retired people say this kind of thing, probably to reassure themselves and others that they are not at loose ends and drifting into oblivion just because they aren’t going to work every day or receiving a paycheck.
One day I heard these words coming up from some deep crevice in my own mind, and before I could stop them, they went right into the telephone.
“Wait a minute,” I wanted to cry out. “What am I saying, and who the hell is saying this?” I am not keeping myself busy. If anything, I am attempting to keep myself unbusy and finding that to be something of a full-time job. I moved away from pathological levels of busyness and doing, only to discover that it is not so easy to demur to either the outer or inner occasions that seem so attractive, so necessary, so important, so reasonable, and so containable — each considered separately — and yet always wind up absorbing more energy than anticipated, making it difficult, if not impossible, to linger in the beauty of being in one place for months at a stretch and living with a sustainable balance between right inward and right outward measure.
[For more on this story by Jon Kabat-Zinn, go to https://medium.com/s/story/the...usyness-604458f689ff]
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