Busy, or full?

When someone inquires how I am, I often reply, “Good. Life is full.” I say that intentionally because I have grown weary of the excuse of being too busy. There’s an implication that in my busyness I have shut out people I love. My mom will call in the middle of the week and say, “Oh, honey, I just hate to bother you; I know how busy you are.” Even harder is when parishioners say, “Oh, I know you’re so busy, I didn’t want to add one more thing to your plate.”

So I’m working on the discipline of considering my life full rather than considering myself busy. To say that life is full is to acknowledge abundance—an abundance of opportunities to engage in work that I find meaningful and interesting; an abundance of ways for my child to discover the world with friends and to energize body, heart, and soul; an abundance of riches because we have a home and friends and family and neighbors and community.

To say that I am busy puts the focus on just me. I am busy with administrivia and details because no one else can pay attention to them quite the way I can (which is untrue). To say that I am busy makes me feel worthy, because busy people must be important people must be powerful people, right? To say that I am busy implies that every moment is crammed with doing things that must matter a great deal, because why would I cram one more thing into my life if it weren’t deeply important?