Dare to Say No 5-7-11

Anderson, South Carolina

While working in the professional world it became a status symbol to defer commitment to doing something or being someplace until a consult with a two-inch-thick daily planner was made. A strong unspoken message circulated – important people are profoundly busy, lacking in white space in their lives, over committed, often double booked. I was never especially important in my professional life, never having one of those $75 Day-At-A-Time planners; never getting past one of those little free monthly bi-folds that stuff in one’s pocket.

Our culture of frantic busyness reinforces the message those with time on their hands are of marginal utility and value to the workplace or culture at large. An oft-quoted quip is “if you want something done, ask a busy person to do it.” Perhaps busy people are often busy simply because they don’t know how to say ‘No’. Certainly this is true in my case. I can cite a constellation of pathological emotional reasons as to why I say ‘Yes’ without thinking and cannot bear to say ‘No’ even with much thought.

“We experience our days as filled with things to finish, letters to write, calls to make, and appointments to keep. Our lives often seem like over-packed suitcases bursting at the seams. In fact, we are almost always aware of being behind schedule. There is a nagging sense that there are unfinished tasks, unfulfilled promises, unrealized proposals. There is always something else we should have remembered, done, or said. There are always people we did not speak to, write to, or visit. Thus, although we are very busy, we also have a lingering feeling of never really fulfilling our obligations.” None other than the Catholic contemplative Henri Nouwen struggled with this forty years ago in the very environment that should have facilitated a humane spacious way of living. What chance do I have?

The result in my case is habitually overpromising and under delivering; even the most trivial of promises go unfulfilled. Failing to call someone as promised, not performing a minor repair or maintenance chore for a cancer patient living across the street, not helping an elderly caregiver with her yard; these bits of unfinished business chip away at my credibility and my serenity. Need I even comment on the condition of my inner spiritual practices and disciplines? From everything I can tell Nouwen managed to hang onto his inner practices and left behind hundreds of spiritual imperatives for those of us devoid of inner practice and white space in our lives.

A dear friend of mine keeps lists, list of lists, mind-numbing numbers of things to be done. Recently she decided to generate a list of things to do in her yard. Last time I saw her yard a few days ago it looked pristine and magnificent in spring finery. I never saw her yard list but she tells me it has no less than fifty things on it, categorized in sub-groups. I can’t image what’s on this list but I do know that despite the onset of a fairly miserable head cold, she has pushed on in her yard to fulfill some of these unspecified tasks. I can’t but wonder if she really smells the roses while working among them; there’s always the next thing to be done.

I have a number of friends who’ve become preoccupied with doing countless things to make money; often flying to far flung places for business seminars, reading books on making money, going to networking groups, ad infinitum. They consume their time and resources attempting to make money, with little success. A culture of frantic busyness does not suggest the merits of dropping back, checking one’s option and throwing a single well-placed pass to an open receiver down field. A fine book written twenty years ago suggests focusing on the one thing we do really well, practicing that craft until we’re better at it than anyone else. The supposition of Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow is if we do something we love really really well, others will pay us handsomely for it. Yet, single mindedness is a difficult path to follow in an Attention-Deficit-Afflicted culture where picture-in-picture participation is normative.

Technology overwhelms me with options, many of them wondrous and good. The reality is I don’t need to attempt to fill a seat at every good performance done in this region of the world. I don’t need to visit every magnificent place on earth, frenetically gaming for free airline tickets to paradise. The insane reality is I often try doing so. Recently I made a frantic effort to visit six houses on a garden tour before attending an evening concert in a distant city, wanting to photograph all of them. I came home from my whirlwind efforts and the best image I saw all day was staring at me from my kitchen window. The best photograph I made in days was on my side of the fence. There was a spiritual imperative for me in that image about slowing down and smelling the roses.

I now use a thick padded leather day planner with my initials in gold. A credit card company wants me to experience the illusion of self-importance and was willing to send me the $75 planner for $2.98. The tacit message is self-important people tend to spend more money on credit and generate more revenue for credit card companies, companies not the least bit interested in my serenity or ability to fulfill even my most trivial of promises. There certainly is merit in using planners to organize one’s life. For those of us with travel obligations and lecture commitments, it makes sense to know where and when we are supposed to be to fulfill our promises. It’s not the responsibility of credit card issuers or day-planner publishers to make sure I am prudent with the use of my time and serenity; it’s my responsibility to find balance in the center of maelstroms of good things wishing to dissipate my time, energy, and finance.

We are told Jesus was busy, serving up meals to thousands, preaching to legions of people following him wherever he went, healing hundreds. He found it necessary to pull away and go off into the wilderness to pray. As Nouwen points out in one of his imperatives, Jesus is not telling us to become cloistered monks in a silent monastery, rather he is suggesting “Jesus wants us to move from the ‘many things’ to the ‘one necessary thing.’ We each have to decide what that is. Perhaps for me in the near-term it’s learning to say ‘No’ and looking out my own kitchen window.

Blessings,

Craig C. Johnson