CAN’T STOP

‘It is not that we have a short time to live, but that we waste a lot of it’ - Senex

It’s 5 am, on a Thursday in mid-February, I wake up sweating after a very anxious and interrupted sleep. My body feels stressed and under pressure. After a few hours of frenetic revision, I leave to take an exam, which I had studied hard for. I take the exam, but my mind is struggling to solve the complex mathematical problems. Once done, as soon as the professor gives us permission to leave, I immediately run to the airport and hop on a plane to Paris. The city of love provides me with a weekend filled with meaningful conversations, fellowship, fun and learning, but also with panic attacks, anger, insecurity, cynicism, and a feeling of exhaustion. My body feels so sick, weak, and exhausted that even as I am surrounded by many friends, I can’t feel any love, even from my closest friends. Eventually my mentor sits me down and earnestly tells me: ‘You are now suffering the consequence of a restless, hurried, overstimulated lifestyle. You need to slow down, build a habit of resting, and simplify your life. Repent and be ruthless about it’. 

Wow, that still hits me now. Just the way he said it, as I was in my pit of desperation, it touched a deep cord in my heart. It had been feeling chronically exhausted and depleted for months, with a whole series of consequences to my spiritual, relational, emotional and physical wellbeing. I went home feeling broken, craving to dwell in the arms of my parents and rest in the comfort of my abode, to just relax, and slow down. I felt connected to a higher way of seeing the world, more detached from the mundane and meaningless, embracing only the important and the good, and feeling at peace.

This sensation quickly faded as my incapacity to sleep progressed, and the busyness discombobulated me as the new semester began. All my efforts became vapor in the wind. The consequences of my hurried, over busy life were plenty: feeling like I was flirting with a burn out weekly, exhausted every other day, on the edge all the time, quick to (explosive) anger toward those closest to me, not able to be in the present, missing out on the depth of the exciting, meaningful, and joyous experiences at my disposal, and just disconnected, from myself, others and God.

I felt fragmented, in my (too) many pursuits, which had lost their meaning (this newsletter as well). I didn’t even have the space to mourn my dying grandparents. An act of love left me drained, easily leading to resentment, even feeling lonely in the midst of crowds of people who love me. In my constant inner exhaustion, I developed an addiction to many fake comforts like social media, Netflix, video games, and even worse, escapist behaviors.

In my attempt to live a full life, I was completely missing out on life to the full!

(WHY DOES IT HAVE TO BE SO) COMPLICATED

Since the beginning of the  year, I have been discussing the theme ‘focus’. The main ideas are: (1) the quality of your life and your own self depends on what you  pay attention to AND (2) in a world of distractions and comparisons, practicing gratitude is essential, especially to prevent abrupt deconstruction’, which often comes from a dissatisfied and resentful heart (see NL4 ). 

I further explored the connection to the human condition of being desire driven beings: (1) the importance of understanding and taming the inner motions of our heart, since the root of many human problems are ´disordered desire´, which lead to a disordered life AND (2) disappointment, unmet expectations and impetuous desires without supervision can lead to an abrupt deconstruction (see NL5).

In this newsletter, I want to explore another aspect that influences our ability to focus and causes abrupt deconstruction (and one of the biggest epidemics of our times): ‘hurriness’.

If you just scratched your head in response to the final word of the previous sentence… yes, it’s not an actual word, I made it up, it’s a mix of hurry+business and it’s definitely not a cover up for the mistake that I carry from the previous newsletter.
I define it as a lifestyle of an overbusied mind, overfit schedule, not accounting the limitations of being human, in disregard of what is truly important, motivated by the underlying lie that ‘more is better’. The result of this epidemic?

Our digital lives consume our real ones, our infinite to-do lists overwhelm us. We live artificial and socially induced worries.  Our minds are crushed by inhumane expectations to keep going at a frenetic pace; moreover over-stimulation kills room for boredom and quiet. Sleep deprivation is the norm. Enslavement to entertainment and highly addictive numbing distractions is celebrated. Ultimately, we are detached from a deeper sense of life. We become spectators of the present, missing out on true connection with our loved ones, ourselves and God.

‘Hurriness’ is a cacophony for our souls.

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Let me put it in a plainer way. 

We are not meant for this pace of life. The abundance of digital distractions, ambitions one can pursue, choices in career, hobbies, and entertainment, and the enormous social ambiences we get to enjoy, are also the means through which we live such frenetic lives. The reason on the other hand resides in the worldview narrative and morality which abides in the West (and not only): More is better.

This lie inherent in our human heart has been inflated and sugar coated by the rise of consumerism. Its ramification pushes us to live insane lifestyles: the more money the better, the more events and parties the better, the more success the better, the bigger the house (or any material good) the better, the more travels the better, the more you do the better. We want to be everything, do everything, own everything and feel everything, now. Add onto this laziness, being disorganized, unaware of one’s limits and distractions. The result we live a busy, restless, hurried, overstimulated, lifestyle. 

There is always something to do, something to listen to, someone to talk to, something to watch, … there is always something so that there we have become alienated to rest, boredom, solitude, quietness, and simplicity. If not busy in things to do and take care of, we are busy in our minds, if tired physically, we are emotionally and spiritually, if not in a hurry with our agenda, we feel the hurry of life slipping though our fingers, if not … well we probably are overstimulated (digital addictions are reeeaaal), if not surviving, we might just be content with a mediocre version of life.

This hyperbolized generalization is written through the lenses of my own life, yet to some degree some of you I bet relate and resonate.

If so, allow me to introduce the symptoms of this sickness and my fight to win it. 

(I) FEEL SO NUMB

“Hurry is not of the devil; hurry is the devil” - Carl Jung 

To better understand the symptoms I’ll introduce the root problem from another perspective at a deeper level:

1. Distraction:  At times we procrastinate, sloth around, and get distracted so easily by trivialities, digital and material consumerism. with last minute becoming the norm, our minds are very busy as well as our schedule (just with useless “scrolling”), the quality of our focus drops, and the urgent suffocates the important. Lack of discipline, disconnection with ones call in life, bad habits, materialism are at the root.

2. Pride: The big one, at least for me. In the book ‘Crazy Busy’, Kevin Deyoung explains how “The presence of extreme busyness in our lives may point to deeper problems—a pervasive  people-pleasing, restless ambition, a malaise of meaninglessness.”. Think about that. Trying to compensate for an internal void of meaning with an overfilled schedule, great pursuits and receiving admiration and appreciation from pleasing the other.

I relate so much to the previous statement. For the sake of my social status and the desire of love from others, unconsciously, I have pushed myself beyond my limits in responsibilities and giving of my time (and not only). The desire for glory, as a means of identity, respect and meaning, has pushed me to wear out my mind with quantum physics and so on (terrible choice). The existential discomfort which never leaves me I tried to suffocate with a life so full it just had to be full of meaning. All of this is exacerbated by the sense of urgency that kindles in my heart after almost dying from. 

Ironic are the consequences.

‘What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul’ (Jesus of Nazareth)

(B) Regarding the consequences or the felt effects, they’re  plentiful. I will present the list offered by John M. Comer in his best selling book ‘The ruthless Elimination of Hurry’ (which I strongly recommend): Irritability - Hypersensitivity - Restlessness - Workaholism - Emotional numbness - Out-of-order priorities - Lack of care for your body - Escapist behaviors - Slippage of spiritual disciplines - Isolation (if a few of these words resonate or spark your curiosity, ask chat GPT what the author meant for them). Personally, when I read this list my jaw dropped. So many struggles that I’ve been wrestling with for years finally found a cause.

What if I so easily blow up in front of my dad not because he is annoying or untidy (which he is both at times, but  also an incredibly good father, love you), but maybe I’m so tired and stressed that I just don’t have the ability to reasonably respond to whatever futile triviality bothers me.

What if I indulge in 3 hours of Netflix at the end of the day due to the felt exhaustion that never leaves me, unable to engage in more life giving leisure as I’m too tired.

What if the reason why I feel so disconnected from God is because for the past 3 months I’ve not sat down in tranquility without a rush to try and feel his presence and contemplate his reality. 

What if I don’t feel like I’m really living, really present, able to absorb the beauty if my life, feel the love of my friends, connect with the divine, engage in true leisure, misaligned with my true self and its values because I’m too busy, too in a hurry and too tired?

What if my worse moments as a human were caused by living in disconnection to the human sacred pace of life?

I’M SO TIRED

“Love, joy, and peace...are incompatible with hurry.” Ruthless Elimination of Hurry - JM Comer

Healing from this sickness is really difficult, especially for me as I suffer from a grave state of it.

One of the reasons why I prolonged the sending of this newsletter was my periodic relapse. Hence, you will find what I aspire to live up to, but find great difficulty being consistent about it.

The solution is not scheduling optimization, not more time in a day, nor more vacation, but slowing down, resting, simplifying our ‘every day’. 

Like when  you are playing music, too many instruments at once require great mastery that few have. If you don’t follow the tempo you miss out. If you listen to one song after the other you aren’t really able to enjoy them fully. 

Or an essay with no pauses, too many ideas, riding an overarching climax will be inaccessible to the reader.

For me this has meant a lot of sacrifice and discipline: prolonging my masters program, going to bed earlier (to wake up earlier), having a long moment of solitude and reflection in the morning welcoming God’s wisdom and spirit in my heart, getting comfortable with boredom and silence (eliminating music and podcasts), being ruthless about my digital distractions, doing less of my newsletter or other pursuits, and taking a whole day every other week of total cut off from work where I get to fully experience life through community, play, food, engaging in activities that most represent being human.

At least I try to. Failing about every other week… but when I do manage life looks different, feeling alive, tranquil, joyful, whole, grateful, l even in the midst of difficulties.

… to be continued on the relation of ‘hurriness’ and deconstruction and more practices on ‘the solution’

UPDATES

As you might have read in my last newsletter, I was very busy these months. I would love to tell you in detail all that I did and went through but I could fill an entire book. So, I’ll only share that recently life is very good, as I’m travelling, seeing friends and family in majesty of the UK.

Today I will celebrate 1 year of Life to the Max. By mid-September. Stay tuned for some big updates :)

                                             Love Laugh Live to the Max 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 

The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry - JM Comer (Out of all the books I read during this year, this has been the most transformative)

Crazy Busy - Thomas de Yung

De Brevitate Vitae -  Seneca

MUSICGRAPHY

I’m so tired - Beatles

Feel so numb - Nirvana

(Why does it have to be so) Complicated - Avrii Lagne

Can’t stop - Red Hot Chilli Peppers