Time time time, look what’s become of me ...

The kids were back to school this week, and it is a fairly well established fact the first week of term is designed to make teachers forget that they had a holiday at all. Last week was no exception – work was busy with the usual things, there were music and sport events for the prince and poet, social interactions to attend, study to complete and the weekly round of shopping, cleaning and cooking. Nothing out of the ordinary for a middle class family.

Why then, are we always so tired?

For most people I know, the working week goes by in a flurry, leaving Friday night and weekends for a round of vapid social events, home maintenance and some time with the kids. Which leaves only Sunday to prepare for the next draining five days.

Is this any way to live a life?

What ever happened to Music, Dance or Art? Restaurants are busier than ever but they push patrons through with a startling rapidity leaving no time to enjoy a lingering meal over a decent conversation (and it goes without saying a decent bottle of red). We all seem to be struggling to find time for exercise, for eating right, for reading and for maintaining relationships, houses and an inner life.

No wonder people are looking for alternative ways to live. Down sizing was a popular catch-phrase a while ago. Sea changers are on the rise. We talk about family friendly work places and buy books to improve our work/life balance.

What’s wrong?

In a word, depth. Over filling our schedules leaves each experience running into the next without space for reflection. We have no time for integration; we seek more and more experience to meet our longings. Our lives become one solitary event in which the invitation was birth and the only way to leave is in a wooden box. For the meantime, run from thing to thing until you just . . . run . . . out . . . . of  . . . .time . . . .

Drive 150km North from my place.  You’ll come to a Spanish style town in the middle of outback Western Australia. New Norcia. Like monasteries around the world, their guesthouse is regularly packed and my friends the monks spend a lot of their time talking about the inner life – and especially, balance.

The monastic life has a lot of wisdom to offer the world.  There is time to work, to study, to eat, to be silent, to reflect. Balance. Stability. What matters is now – how I am relating to myself, to my brothers and sisters, and to the wider world. Everything else will be there again tomorrow!

I really want to get off this treadmill and I want to teach my kids to do it too. So we visit the monks. And learn to say no.

Pax Vobiscum