This week’s episode of the CBC’s Tapestry was focused on busy-ness.
As 20th century Anglo-American Catholic writer Thomas Merton says:
“There is a pervasive form of contemporary violence, and that is activism and overwork. The rush and pressure of modern life are a form, perhaps the most common form, of this innate violence. To allow oneself to be carried away by a multitude of conflicting concerns, to surrender to too any demands, to commit oneself to too many projects, to want to help everyone and everything is to succumb to violence. The frenzy of our activism neutralizes our work for peace. It destroys our own inner capacity for peace, because it kills the root of the inner wisdom which makes work fruitful.”
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Season 18: Episode 8
There must have been busier moments than this in human history. Inventing the wheel, building entire civilizations – can’t have been all that easy. So why does modern life feel so … hectic? This week on Tapestry, Crazy Busy! Do we really need to be as busy as we think?
Click HERE for details on this week’s guests, links, and interviews. There’s even a video demo about how to meditate.
Segment One: The Busy Trap
We talk to writer Tim Kreider, the author of a much-forwarded New York Times essay called The Busy Trap. In it, he suggested modern life’s busy-run-amok mindset is neither healthy nor, really, all that necessary.
Tim’s latest book of essays is called We Learn Nothing. The evocative obituary that he wrote for Ray Bradbury last summer is called Uncle Ray’s Dystopia.
And, here’s a gem from the cutting room floor. Hear Tim talking about how he and a friend have drawn important life lessons from the film Pee-wee Herman’s Big Adventure
Segment Two: Too Busy for God
Mike Zigarelli is a devout Christian academic at Messiah College in Pennsylvania. His own personal chaos led him to conduct a survey that found believers struggling with the daily grind to find time for God. Zigarelli is the author of Freedom from Busyness.
Segment Three: The Importance of ‘Being’ and not ‘Doing’
If a well-lived life means having time for some quiet contemplation, can we fit it in? Father Laurence Freeman, director of the World Community for Christian Meditation, says human beings are, believe it or not, wired for stillness.
