Let the Hammock Beckon

Ask a neighbor, “How was your weekend?” or of a friend inquire, “Do you want to have lunch?” Or write in an email to your daughter, “When are the grandchildren coming to visit this summer?” Chances are the negative responses you receive will all include some version of busy. Too busy. Crazy busy. Wicked busy.  I’m-going-nuts-busy. Just asking a neighbor how she’s doing is likely to elicit similar response.

Busy, says Tim Kreider in a recent New York Times opinion piece, is our new default response.

He’s on to something of course. Few among us are without our own use of busy to explain why we can’t laugh and exchange stories over a sandwich with a friend or plunk our bums down in the shade with a book on even the most languid summer weekends. And given that we’re not all pulling back-to-back shifts in the I.C.U., as Kreider points out, or are single moms juggling young kids and multiple minimum-wage jobs or are primary round-the-clock caregivers of an aged, infirm parent, much of our busyness would seem to be largely self-imposed. So many of the duties and obligations that make us not only busy but tired, even exhausted, are often voluntary, fueled not by generosity or good will, but by drive, ambition and anxiety.

Increasingly, we seem addicted to busyness. Even our kids are in overdrive with their obsessive text messaging and Facebook checking, with their hyper-structured special classes, sports schedules, camps, lessons and play groups, extra-curricular activities they’re often encouraged to engage in by their “crazy busy” carpooling parents. Last winter, while shopping in Chicago, I overheard what looked to be about a nine-year old say into his cell phone, “I’ll have to get back to you. I need to check my calendar.”

No question that much about how we’re forced to live in these modern, fast-paced and economically-stressed times makes us all busier. But there’s also no question that most of us have choices in how busy we truly are and want or need to be. And fact is, more and more people seem to choose to be busy. Maybe it inflates our popularity and our importance. Instead of feeling put-upon, we’re sought-after. Indeed, scratch beneath the surface of a lamented busyness that sounds like a complaint, as Kreider suggests, and you may detect the hint of a boast. Further, being busy or booked or in demand means you and your life can’t possibly be trivial or meaningless. You’re indispensable. You matter.

Being “too busy” may indeed keep you from doing this or that thing, but it may also conceal the conclusion that Lia Purpura reaches in one of her essays: “We are small, limited, finite, and over too soon.”

Given that we are “over too soon,” no surprise then that we want to pack this one life with lots of goodies. But with what exactly? A crazy-busy condition may well be like our email inbox that is brimming, but with how many messages that are important, worth reading, or merit a response? Personally, I’d be less busy if I didn’t have to delete the chain letters, jokes, requests to Like or Link In, the forwarded YouTube videos of hapless pets or obligingly adorable toddlers, and the unedited photos of someone’s recent vacation or the endless stream of a new infant doing what infants do best before a camera: sleep and wear cute outfits. And if, before clicking Delete, I didn’t feel compelled to review all those emails first. Just in case.

Being less busy is likely to mean being more quiet. In my essay, “In Concert,” I celebrate the full and enriching pockets of quiet that living on this small island routinely provide and I lament (okay, rail against) our culture’s increasingly chronic and pervasive – invasive – noise. The cranked up amplitude that now seems necessary in just about everything we do, wherever we are. A ratcheted up backdrop that robs us of quiet. At least to this non-expert, it seems we’re becoming physiologically habituated to noise.

Surely, noise and its myriad distractions put a stumbling block before those of us seeking solitude. But noise, in prohibiting the reflection quiet often births, also shields against the fear that, in the still and quiet, we could be ambushed by certain parts of our self that might show up. Even a child’s time-out, that banishment to a room where, though likely rigged with computer and TV, is supposed to be a quiet time in which to disengage and defrazzle, is meant as punishment. And for those of us with lots more years under our belts, a dose of quiet may only translate as painful pause before being delivered back to friends, or to strangers in a crowded mall or pulsing stadium, or into the churning hum and buzz, the inner natter and nag our busy lives demand.

Just as noise may shield us, our self-imposed busyness may hedge against potential emptiness, conceal what we lack in our lives but without the requisite quiet and stillness are unable to identify. Wise Seneca long ago noted: “Life does not pause to remind you that it is running out.” My translation: Life is too short to be busy.

So I’m thinking: Might we not be better off to find a little more time in which to switch off our revving engines, at least shift from Drive into Park and idle a bit? As a writer, I’m supposed to be good at such a thing. Edward Hoagland claims writers know how to idle properly – we “loaf attentively.” Others may see us differently – writers whose most laborious task seems to be lifting pencil to page, fingers to keyboard. Who try to pass off four hours at their desk each morning as a workday. Still, this writer anyway can attest: push away from that desk, or worse, let too much stand in the way of getting there, and the busyness of errands, standing obligations and new voluntary tasks and assignments consume.

Yesterday afternoon, for the first time this summer, I let the hammock beckon. I reclined in the branch-filtering sunlight, listening to the nattering finches, the sloshing waves against rocks, the muttering eiders with their offspring rafting up in the bay. My mind freely roamed. And when it veered too close to my waiting To Do list, I steered it back to the curb, or, more accurately, the scenic overlook. I had no Eureka moment. And not just because I lie beneath a conifer shedding some dead – unnecessary? – needles, I experienced nothing that came close to a Newton and his apple moment. My conclusions were small.

In the week ahead, I will of course not miss Shakespeare in Stonington, but I could easily take a pass on the invitation to see a movie and instead wait for its release on Netflix with its unrestricted viewing times. This summer, I will not after all take up tennis again and its obligatory matches and specified court times. In the garden, I’ll deadhead but not arm myself as a warrior against every weed. I really don’t have to make frequent checks into the number of visits to my webpage. And I can more freely hit my email Delete button – truly, what are the chances that one is going to tell me I’ve been nominated for a Pulitzer? With renewed memories of last summer’s visit by two of our grandchildren, the hours they spent probing the low tide shoreline, roaming our woods, splashing in Lily Pond without a relay or starting gun in sight, I’ll again prevail upon my daughter. And in my continuing resistance to social media, I’ll push away from the screen and opt instead to renew my effort to schedule a lunch, preferably leisurely and in a quiet corner, with my in-the-flesh, here-and-now friend.